


It's Going To Be A Long Day

by My_King_And_Your_Lionheart



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Also Death For The Purpose of Killing People, And Smooshed Them Together, Death For The Purpose of Godtiering, Dissociation, Don't Turn Your Back On The Body, Explicit Language, Hijinks & Shenanigans, I Literally Just Picked What I Liked About Each Media, It's A Homestuck AU, Keith is a potty mouth, Let's Just Get That Out There Right Now, M/M, Only the Bad Guys Stay Dead, Sheith Big Bang 2018, So Much Cursing Like Wow, Some Fluff, Some angst, Some kissing, The power of friendship, Their Minds Are At One Point Physically Separated From Their Bodies?, These Kids Need A Nap And A Cookie, This Thing Is In No Way Shape Or Form Canon Ish With Either Source Material, Video Game Mechanics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-20
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2019-06-29 00:14:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 38,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15717972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/My_King_And_Your_Lionheart/pseuds/My_King_And_Your_Lionheart
Summary: Keith didn't know that his boyfriend's house didn't really just get struck by a meteor a year ago. He just knew that Shiro was still alive and that this SBURB game had something to do with it. So when he enters with Matt to find Shiro still alive, some white haired girl sleeping in a golden tower, with the rest of their friends stuck in an alternate session form theirs,  and a giant purple asshole going around killing them all, Keith has a feeling it's going to be a very long day.In short: A Homestuck AU





	It's Going To Be A Long Day

**Author's Note:**

> Ho. Ly. Shit. This thing was an absolute monster to write, but I am so proud of it. 
> 
> The working title was Voltron: Be Homestuck but I like this one better, I think. I don't know. I don't have thoughts anymore, after this. shrug.
> 
> But anyway, onto the important things, like alexlarder's art for this piece that literally kept me going as I was working on this like y'all my heart is so full I could combust y'all gotta check it out --> http://alexlarder.tumblr.com/post/177183497554/i-was-once-again-paired-up-with-the-amazing
> 
> Anyway, this one actually has been beta'd, thanks bro, but still my same schtick- you see something I did wrong, tell me! But in a constructive way pls i can't handle criticism. <3 !!!
> 
> Enjoy!

Your name is Keith Kogane, and you are the proud owner of the Sburb beta. You have every intention of playing it with your best friend and your boyfriend, but you don’t know if they have their copies yet. Your phone buzzes and it seems that Matt has sent you a picture. Well, he has his beta. You aren’t sure if it’ll still run smoothly after he’s licked it like that though. You open your Pesterchum to bother your boyfriend. You really want to know if he’s got his copy yet. 

brassKnuckles [BK]  began pestering  kerberosBound [KB]  at 17:42!

BK: hey Shiro   
BK: did you get your beta yet   
KB: Hey Keith.   
KB: Yeah I have my beta. I don’t know though.  
KB: I’m feeling weird about playing.  
BK: how do you mean   
KB: I’m not sure.  
KB: Like it’s not going to be good or something.  
BK: eh if its not good well yell at Matt and go get milkshakes   
BK: itll be fine   
BK: promise   
KB: Yeah you’re right.  
KB: If it ends up coming to milkshakes you’re buying BK: its a date <3 KB: <3

brassKnuckles [BK]  ceased pestering  kerberosBound [KB]  at 17:50!

You want this game to be fun, but now you kind of want a milkshake. Oh well. You can get one after you guys play. You put the disc into your computer, but there’s no rush. The game is comprised of servers and clients and you guys had all agreed that Matt would get Shiro in the game, Shiro would get you in, and you’d close the loop by getting Matt. The both of them are radio silent right now, so everything must be going according to plan. You leave your room to go grab a soda from the kitchen.

When you get back, cold can in hand, there are several messages waiting for you. It must be Shiro giving you instructions on how to enter. You open Pesterchum. It’s Matt.

brainlessBeauty [BB]  began pestering  brassKnuckles [BK]  at 18:07!

BB: K we have a fucking problem  


BK is an idle chum! 

BB: K pls i need u back here  
BB: Keith!!!  
BK: shit Matt whats wrong  
BB: its shiro  
BB: hes gone  


BK is an idle chum!

BB: K  
BB: K im so sorry

What fucked up kind of joke is this? What kind of absolute horseshit is Matt trying to tell you right now? You have to talk to Shiro. He’ll laugh at how easy you bought it, and then you’ll all play this stupid game together and get milkshakes after. 

BK: Matt what the fuck do you mean hes gone  
BK: is he afk like what do you mean gone  
BK: people dont just disappear like that  
BB: its on the news  
BB: freak meteor just hit his house  
BB: no one saw it comin  
BB: fuck  
BK: no  
BK: no no no

Matt is sending you more messages, and you vaguely see the green text pop up but it’s blurry through your tears. Shiro can’t just be gone. You numbly pull up a news feed in a separate window, and sure enough you can see the smoking hole where Shiro’s house used to sit. His neighbors’ houses are unharmed. The damage from the meteor didn’t even leave anything behind. You didn’t think that meteors could do that kind of damage, so cleanly annihilating without so much as a trace of excess damage. You focus back in on Matt.

BB: K breathe  
BK: no no nononononononononononononono  
BK: Matt what the ever loving fuck happened  
BK: it wasnt a meteor was it  
BB: wtf r u talkin about K its right there  
BB: hes gone  
BB: K im so fuckin sorry  
BK: i have to go  


brainlessBeauty [BB]  ceased pestering  brassKnuckles [BK]  at 18:46!

It had something to do with this fucking game – a meteor doesn’t come out of nowhere, with no warning, to kill your boyfriend. That is not how things work, but you can’t prove shit without someone to play the game with. You’ll look into it, see if anyone else disappears mysteriously. You’re going to get Shiro back, if it’s the last thing you do. 

Keith: Be Katie

Your name is Katie Holt but your older brother calls you Pidge. In the present moment, you are trying to convince your brother’s best friend to play a game with the rest of your friends. The Sburb alpha is sitting pretty on your desk, right next to your sweet gaming set-up and you’re trying to get Keith to put his copy of the Sburb beta into the computer. 

pricelessPolymer [PP]  began pestering  brassKnuckles [BK]  at 22:11!

PP: Please, Keith?  
PP: It’ll be fun, I promise.  
BK: Pidge i already told you id play  
PP: Oh. Right. Sorry, I must have forgotten.  
PP: It’s a little weird that the beta is compatible with the alpha, right?  
BK: oh its really weird  
BK: but the alpha patch might just hook into the beta and fix it in game  
BK: who the hell knows  
PP: We’ll find out, I suppose.  
PP: Okay, I’m going to start it up. Talk to you in a bit.  


pricelessPolymer [PP]  ceased pestering  brassKnuckles [BK]  at 22:23!

The alpha has finished loading on your computer. You’d already agreed to be Keith’s server player, and Keith would in turn be Matt’s. You’ve pulled up some strange guide to Sburb on a different monitor, but the purple text glitches in and out of being readable. It’s quite unfortunate, really, because the introduction, while strange, was very well written. You figure you won’t need a guide, anyway. It’s not like the game can be that hard, right?

The game has finished loading onto your computer, the innocent green play button waiting to be clicked. You hover your mouse over it for a few seconds. You have a feeling in your gut that you don’t like. It’s just a game, though, it’s not like playing it will kill you. Besides, you already told Keith you would, and you hate going back on promises.

You click play. The word spins out and the screen goes black only to fade into… Keith’s room? Wait, what? How the hell can you see his room? Okay, you should talk to your client player, something isn’t right.

pricelessPolymer [PP]  began pestering  brassKnuckles [BK]  at 22:25!

PP: Uh, Keith?  
BK: yeah  
PP: Something’s fucky.  
BK: what do you mean its fucky  
PP: I mean I can see your room?  
PP: And you in it?  
PP: Like how does that work?  
BK: well fucked if i know Pidge  
BK: look just keep going  
BK: i have a feeling that since we started playing we have to finish playing  
BK: or else  


brassKnuckles [BK]  ceased pestering pricelessPolymer [PP]  at 22:31!

Well that’s not ominous at all Keith, thanks for that. Okay, so the countdown on your screen must mean something. You start deploying things that seem important, looking back at the purple text guide every so often in case it suddenly become readable. There are words that stand out, words that share the names of machine you are currently using to help Keith. Maybe that’s good? You really hope so.

Matt comes into your room, and you barely spare a glance over your shoulder for him. He grabs his copies of the game beta and you want to stop him, but you know Keith is right. Something bad is coming and the only way to save him is by letting him play. The counter in the corner of the screen keeps decreasing. You grab his bed and toss it out of the way. It bumps into the top of one of the machines, the crux-something, and a glowing orb pops out, as well as a column of red stone. You grab the column and find that it fits perfectly into the totem lathe. Thank God everything doesn’t have to be a federal fucking issue. The glowing orb is following Keith around, but a glance to the purple guide tells you what you should do.

Before you can do much, though, the news ticker tape that is eternally scrolling along the bottom of your screen reads out that meteors are falling. Lots of them, and most of them huge. Fuck. You go onto another monitor and pull up the meteor field map, only to find that a meteor is going to kill Keith within 20 minutes. There’s a circle over several parts of your house, as well, but they won’t hit for a while. Long enough to enter the game, because now that this is happening, you remember what happened a year ago with Matt’s other best friend. With Shiro.

The meteor is visible from Keith’s room now, and you get back to business. Keith’s yelling at you over Pesterchum, so you should answer him.

Pidge: Be Keith 

Your name is Keith Kogane, and you are about to fucking die. A lot of shit is happening, right now. Pidge is throwing all sorts of machinery around, there’s a meteor coming to fucking kill you, and this fucking glowing orb is following you around like you know what the hell is happening. In case it isn’t clear, you do not know what the hell is happening. You wish you did, but everything is happening very quickly and nothing makes sense and Pidge just did something that made a red gummy lion come from out of nowhere. Cool.

That meteor is getting bigger. 

Fuck.

Okay, what can you do now? Panic, but that won’t do anyone much good. Talk to Pidge? Yeah, good plan.

brassKnuckles [BK]  began pestering pricelessPolymer [PP]  at 22:38!

BK: uhhhh okay so how are you gonna keep me from dying a firey death  
BK: please tell me you have a plan  
PP: Relax, Keith, of course I have a plan  
PP: Kind of  
BK: kind of  
BK: you kind of have a plan to keep me alive  
BK: wow im so comforted  
BK: really Pidge you shouldnt have  
PP: Oh shut up  
PP: Was this your cat?  
PP: Hup  
BK: Pidge what the fuck did you just do to my cat  
BK: oh my god  
BK: red what the fuck  
BK: what   
PP: Have fun talking to your cat.  
PP: And honestly I have no clue how to save you, but my bet is on the gummy lion.  
PP: Good luck.  


pricelessPolymer [PP]  ceased pestering  brassKnuckles [BK]  at 22:53!

Okay, well, you’re fucked. But at least you have your cat. You love her, even though she’s usually a grumpy old thing most of the time. She loves you in her own special way, you think.

That happenstance distracted you for all of five minutes until you zone back into your situation, because you are literally about to die in an entirely unavoidable way save an actual miracle. God, you really don’t want to fucking die.

Suddenly, in a way you definitely didn’t see coming, you are saved by an actual fucking miracle. The gummy lion opens its mouth, showing off sharp looking gummy teeth, and roars. The sound is deafening, and you clap your hands over your ears to block out the noise. You squeeze your eyes shut against the pain pounding in your eardrums. Your head is going to split apart if that noise doesn’t fucking stop.

The noise fucking stops. For a second. Then another fucking noise picks up where the lion left off.

The discordant sound of hundreds of bells all ringing at the same time at different speeds and notes assails your poor, wounded ear drums. A headache beats at your temples. It’s going to be a very long day. You stretch, looking up at the sky and you can see clouds. But they aren’t really clouds. In one, you can see an outsider’s view of the day you got accepted into the Garrison. In another, you can see the day you and Matt got busted for stealing pudding from the mess hall after hours. In yet another one, you can see the orphanage you grew up in, rickety stairs and all. The headache intensifies. 

brassKnuckles [BK]  began pestering pricelessPolymer [PP]  at 23:02!

BK: hey so what the fucks going on   
PP: So I’m guessing you didn’t get hit by that meteor.  
BK: no the lion gummy thing roared and then I ended up here  
BK: can you not see me anymore  
PP: Where is “here”?  
PP: And, no. You’re not on my screen anymore.  
BK: well bitch tits on a stick  
BK: what the fuck do I do now  
PP: You still haven’t told me where you are.  
BK: oh  
BK: I’m in this valley thing  
BK: and there are all these bell towers around  
BK: it’s so fuckin loud here  
BK: and there are clouds  
BK: but not like our clouds  
PP: Well, how are those clouds different?  
BK: there are things in the clouds   
PP: So very descriptive, Keith.  
BK: fuck off  
BK: it’s like the clouds are playing a video or something  
BK: and no cloud is playing the same one  
PP: Is there a cloud playing vine compilations?  
BK: ha ha  
BK: no  
BK: this is all stuff from my past  
BK: got some nice big clouds full of childhood abandonment right there  
PP: Oh. Sorry to hear that.  
BK: like I fucking care anymore  
BK: the orphanage wasn’t bad to me  
BK: hell one of the sisters was the coolest person ive ever met  
PP: About that…  
BK: what  
BK: what Pidge  
BK: Pidge what the fuck  
PP: It’s nothing serious, really.  
PP: Or, at least, I don’t think it is.  
PP: But I can’t see anyone on my monitor at all.  
BK: they probably just werent affected by the blast  
BK: theyre fine  
BK: the nuns are badass and they wouldnt let anything happen to the kids  
BK: they’re fine Pidge stop giving me that look  
PP: You can’t see my face.  
PP: How do you know what look I’m giving you?  
BK: I can tell  
PP: Okay, Keith.  


pricelessPolymer [PP]  ceased pestering  brassKnuckles [BK]  at 23:37!

The orphanage is fine – Pidge doesn’t know what she’s talking about. You are violently reminded of the smoking nothing that was left of Shiro’s house. You put your hands on your knees, feeling suspiciously like you’re going to throw up. You don’t know what you’d do if anything happened to Sister Katherine, who’s raised you since your dad walked out and is basically your mother (you’re lying, you know exactly what you’d do, you’d done something when Shiro’d went missing). You close your eyes against the memories playing in the sky. You’re happy Pidge can’t see you. There are some things that are too personal. There are some things you thought you’d gotten over years ago. Apparently not. There’s one cloud you hope you never find. 

A weird cat looking thing that can walk on two legs comes up to you. There are a few behind it. All of them are different colors. You hate this fucking game already, you don’t want to do shit.

“Hero of Time! You are meant to silence the bells!” The way they speak is weird – the clicks and chirps coming out of their mouth is definitely not something you can understand, but the sounds coalesce into words once they hit your brain processing centers. And as much as you’d like some fucking quiet, you aren’t doing anything right now.

Wait. There’s one thing you are doing right now, some hope you’d been holding onto that you need to check out. You open your eyes and focus back on your laptop. Please, if there’s anything out there to believe in anymore, let him be here.

brassKnuckles [BK]  began pestering  kerberosBound [KB]  at 23:42!

BK: Shiro please  
BK: i know its been a year  
BK: but please answer me  
KB: Keith?  
KB: Keith what are you doing here?  
BK: oh my god Shiro youre here  
KB: Keith please you shouldn’t have entered.  
KB: What did you prototype your kernelsprite with?  
BK: Shiro whats going on  
BK: what do you mean prototype  
KB: The glowing orb  
KB: What did you put in it?   


There are a couple of weird creatures coming up over the nearest hill. You keep Pestering Shiro, but you keep an eye on them. Who knows what the hell is hostile here. 

BK: uhh Pidge tossed my cat into it  
BK: and then I almost got hit by a meteor  
BK: have you been in the game this whole time  
KB: Okay that’s fine.  
KB: We just need to make sure that the prototypes are easy things.  
KB: And yeah.  
KB: I’ve been here the whole time.  
KB: It’s been bad.  
BK: where are you  
KB: Ancient Rome, but not actually.  
KB: There’s lots of ruins, and these penguin looking guys, in all sorts of colors.  
KB: We’ve been working to rebuild.   


The creatures are closing in on you, and you let your knife drop out of your strife specibus and into your hand. The glint of steel doesn’t deter them, but a few quick swipes and they all explode into shiny gusher-looking things. There doesn’t seem to be any more imp-things around. Back to Shiro. 

BK: is that your quest  
KB: Basically.  
KB: Have your consorts told you about yours?  
BK: i have to silence all the bells  
BK: but they aren’t very forthcoming about how  
BK: and my memories are in the clouds  
BK: reliving all of that is great  
BK: not  
KB: Sorry to hear that, Keith.  
KB: Sounds pretty bad.  
BK: enough about me  
BK: are you okay  
BK: its good to have you back  
KB: I’ve changed, a bit.  
KB: And it’s good to be back.  
BK: what do you mean changed  
BK: are you okay  
KB: I’ve been better.  
KB: And it’s both better and worse now that you’re here.  
KB: Better in that I missed you, so much.  
KB: Worse in that now you’re in danger, too.  
BK: what do you mean danger  
BK: i mean im in danger of severe tinnitus but that seems to be about it  
BK: those imp assholes weren’t exactly hard  
KB: There are certain  
KB: Things  
KB: That the game expects of you  
KB: Did you wake up yet?  
BK: Shiro i haven’t had the time to fall asleep since i got here  
BK: what are you talking about  
KB: You’ll get it in a second.  
KB: You just have to WAKE UP.  
KB: Pester me when you get back.  


kerberosBound [KB]  ceased pestering brassKnuckles [BK]  at 00:14!

You are awake. What a stupid thought. Wait. You’re not where you just were. There were no walls where you were. These walls are very red. Weird.

You get up from your bed, which you definitely didn’t fall asleep in. Whatever. You look out the window and- wow. That is not the desert. That’s not even your new land of loud fucking bells and unpleasant fucking memories. It’s all very, aggressively gold. You back away from the window after some people in head to toe white see you and point up at your tower. You look around your room, but there’s no door. The window is the only way out.

You walk back over to the window and take a deep breath. This is a video game, right? And besides, you’re asleep, anyway. You can definitely fly in dreams, so you can fly here. Because you’re dreaming. Yeah. Solid logic. Absolutely no holes in that reasoning. Feeling super confident with your hypothesis, you take another breath and jump out of the window.

Holy shit, you’re fucking falling. No, you got this. You always wanted to be an astronaut, now you can fly on your own, if you just figure out how. First things first: stop falling. It’s that thought that halts your descent. Cool, you just have to think things, and it’ll happen. Like lucid dreaming. You got this. Now if you just kind of… lean forward… like that…

You swoop downwards, following wherever your shoulders and head are pointed. Cool. Flying is pretty fun. You fly past the people covered in white, only to find out they aren’t really people at all. They’re humanoid, sure, but their skin is whiter than the clouds, and they’re wearing bright colored clothing. Some kind of game constructs, probably. You fly past them and toward another tower that looks similar to the one you woke up in.

You peak in through the window to see a woman who looks to be about your age sleeping on a bed. Should you wake her up? You probably should, but do you just kind of… go up and nudge her awake? That seems a little rude, but you don’t want to be here alone. You perch yourself on the window sill, and you consider your options. You could nudge her awake, but you think when you woke up here, your other body went to sleep. If she’s in the middle of something, that could be pretty dangerous. You take a step down, looking around the room. It’s pretty cool. Something overcomes you, and you get hit with a wave of tiredness.

You fall asleep.

You wake up.

You pull your head off of your keyboard, where you’ve been typing the letter ‘u’ over and over again. Nice. You read the messages Shiro left for you. God, you still can’t believe he’s alive. You can’t believe he’s been stuck here this whole time. You Pester him.

brassKnuckles [BK]  began pestering  kerberosBound [KB]  at 1:00!

BK: im back  
BK: had the craziest dream  
BK: what now  
KB: Did you see anyone else there?  
BK: yeah  
BK: there was this girl  
BK: looked to be our age  
BK: white hair and a yellow dress  
BK: she was asleep though and i didnt want to wake her  
KB: That’s Allura. She’s another player.  
KB: And that’s fine. She’s already awake.  
BK: all of this waking sleeping bullshit is giving me a headache  
BK: Shiro whats going on  
KB: Honestly, I don’t really know. I just know that I’ve been here for months, and that Allura has been the only other person here with me.  
BK: Shiro  
BK: youve been gone an entire year  
BK: your house got hit by a meteor  
BK: me and matt thought you were dead  
KB: A whole year.  
KB: This game has taken so much from me.  
KB: I’m sorry that you thought I was dead.  
BK: is there someplace we can meet  
BK: i need to see you  
KB: I want to see you too Keith.  
KB: But you need to focus on completing your quests.  
KB: I’m sure there’s going to be a time we can meet up.  
BK: i missed you  
BK: fuck i missed you so much  
KB: Keith.  
KB: I missed you too.  
KB: More than you know.  
KB: But I have to go now.  
KB: I’m sorry.  


kerberosBound [KB]  ceased pestering brassKnuckles [BK]  at 1:46!

BK: Shiro  
BK: wait  
BK: bye i guess  


brassKnuckles [BK]  ceased pestering  kerberosBound [KB]  at 1:48!

Well, now that all that shit happened, you have to get Matt in the game. You sit down in front of your laptop and message him while you load the server portion of the game. You almost feel bad about dragging him into this, but he’ll die if you don’t, so. You don’t feel that bad, in the end. 

brassKnuckles [BK] began pestering  brainlessBeauty [BB] at 2:34!

BK: sup fucker  
BB: K u rly gotta stop being like this.  
BK: long story short  
BK: Shiro’s here  
BK: he’s been here the past year  
BK: Pidge got me in the game and now im gonna get you in  
BB: fuck  
BB: cap’s rly here?  
BB: fuck  
BB: get me in teh fuckin game K  
BK: fuck off and let me work  
BK: ive got your back  
BB: thx K  


brassKnuckles [BK] ceased pestering  brainlessBeauty [BB] at 2:43!

At least he has faith in you. You don’t really trust yourself to not supremely fuck this up, but Pidge did it so it can’t be too hard to keep your best friend from dying. Oh, hey, look the game is done loading. You can see Matt on the screen. He’s panicking. You throw a pillow at him, but it doesn’t do much to calm him down. Actually, it looks like he’s yelling, now. You can’t hear him. Oh, he’s pulled out his phone. And there are the messages you can watch him typing, flooding your inbox. Great. 

brainlessBeauty [BB] began pestering  brassKnuckles [BK] at 2:49!

BB: K wtf?  
BB: stop bein an ass  
BK: you need to calm down Matt  
BK: your sister got me in the game  
BK: if i trusted her to save me  
BK: you need to trust me  
BK: i promise you you arent gonna die  
BB: but how do u kno????  
BK: when have i ever broken a promise to you  
BB: never.  
BK: so trust me on this  
BK: and calm down  
BB: thx K. ur a real bro.  
BK: see you in a bit Matt  


brainlessBeauty [BB] ceased pestering  brassKnuckles [BK] at 3:27!

Now that that’s squared away and Matt is a whole less likely to go into another panicky rush around his room, you start deploying a whole bunch of machines you remember Pidge putting in your room. Apparently Shiro shared his materials with you once you entered. God that’s a lot of grist. Your chest hurts remembering how long he’s been in the game. Fuck, you missed your boyfriend.

Wait. It’s been a year. Are you guys even still dating? Fuck, this is going to have to be a conversation. Ugh. God, he’s been here a whole year. A year of these fucking bells would have driven you crazy, though Shiro doesn’t seem to be the same person as the one who went missing 12 months ago. You don’t know how much he’s changed.

Oh, shit. Matt just went fucking flying. One of his stuffed animals landed in the flashing orb. Well, you guess is could be worse. Now he’s got a weird humanoid dog following him around, so good luck with that, buddy. He’s got a dark green gummy spaceship, and you know that something is going to happen with that before he can enter the game. What, though?

Your computer chimes with incoming messages. God, who the fuck is Pestering you right now. Oh, wait. No one apparently, but some asshole is Trolling you. Better answer this clown.

airApparent [AA] began pestering  brassKnuckles [BK] at 4:13!

AA: How Dare You Enter My Game.  
BK: who the fuck are you  
AA: Do Not Disgrace My Presence With Your Vulgar Language.  
BK: i dont have the fucking time for this buddy  
BK: bye  
brassKnuckles [BK] ceased pestering  airApparent [AA] at 4:17!

brassKnuckles [BK] blocked airApparent [AA]!

Boom. Problem solved.

Fuck, apparently not.

airApparent [AA] began pestering  brassKnuckles [BK] at 4:18!

AA: Okay First Of All  
AA: Rude.  
AA: Second Of All  
AA: Do Not Block Me Again  
AA: You Will Regret It.  
BK: fuck off asshole  
brassKnuckles [BK] ceased pestering  airApparent [AA] at 4:21!

brassKnuckles [BK] blocked airApparent [AA]!

AA: You Bitch.  


If he messages you again, you’re going to have a fucking aneurysm.

You zone back into what’s actually important in time to see Matt’s spaceship go airborne on your computer screen, and his house – or rather, the parts of his house that aren’t his room – disappears. You zoom out a little bit to see his room is placed on the only solid land around for miles; everything as far as you can see is ocean. There are comets streaking through the sky, lighting up the dark blue in small lines.

brainlessBeauty [BB] began pestering brassKnuckles [BK] at 4:27!

BB: K where the hell am i  
BK: uhhh, in the middle of an ocean  
BK: i think i can see some ships in the distance  
BK: hang on let me build up your house  
BB: do u kno if my fam is ok  
BK: ill ask Pidge give me a second  
BB: ya  
BK: she says theyre fine  
BK: a little shaken up  
BK: but theyre fine  
BB: this is gonna sound weird  
BB: have u been trolled by some weird ppl  
BK: yeah this asshole trolled me like ten minutes ago  
BK: what a tool  
BK: his handle was aa  
BB: oh thats not my guy  
BB: nah she was ma  
BK: you called her mommy  
BB: ew K thats gross get away from me  
BB: but nah i figured thats not a first conversation thing  
BB: ill take her out first  
BK: classy  
BB: u kno  
BK: ok ive built your house up a fair bit  
BK: but those fucking imps are around  
BK: so get ur strife specibus sorted out  
BK: then go fuck them up  
BB: yes sir  


brainlessBeauty [BB] ceased pestering brassKnuckles [BK] at 4:36!

You continue to build up Matt’s house as he makes his way up, up, up, killing those small imps along the way. Apparently his weapon of choice is a bo staff and the way he’s swinging it around makes it look easy. You close up your laptop and captchalogue it, grabbing a few other things before you head out of your room. You guess Pidge’s laptop started working again because she’s already built your house up to reach the weird spirograph in the sky, but you want to do some exploring first.

Wait. You go back into your house and fiddle around with the alchemiter until you get a pair of headphones. Noise cancelling, God bless. You slip them on and though the bells aren’t silence completely, they’re pretty damn muted. You rub at the sore spot forming at your temples. Maybe that headache won’t come as fast as you think it will.

You make yourself a little hoverboard while you’re at it, so you won’t have to walk everywhere. You walk back out of your house and hop onto the board. It glides smoothly, going in the direction you tilt, kind of like a skateboard. You ride around, glancing at a few of the clouds every now and then. Some of them aren’t too bad, like this one coming up of you and Sister Katherine making cookies for your birthday, or you and Shiro going skydiving. There’s one, though, that you almost flew into and barely noticed, but now it’s all you can see and it’s him getting into a car and driving away. That’s funny in a bitter sort of way, because you were almost sure you’d repressed this particular memory. Apparently you can’t forget your father walking out on you that easy.

You aren’t sure how long you stand there, but when you finally zone back into your body, you find that Pidge tried to message you. You should probably look at those messages.

pricelessPolymer [PP] began pestering brassKnuckles [BK] at 5:02!

PP: So I don’t know what happened but I restarted my computer and I can see you again.  
PP: And you were right. That is a very unsettling place.  


BK is an idle chum!

PP: Keith, what the hell you aren’t doing anything.  
PP: Keith, answer me.  
PP: What are you looking  
PP: Oh.  
PP: Sorry.  
PP: I’ll see myself out.  


pricelessPolymer [PP] ceased pestering brassKnuckles [BK] at 5:16!

Well, shit. That’s the opposite of what you wanted to happen. Maybe you won’t have to talk about it again. Ever. Fuck, you hope so. You don’t want to message her back right now, so you pocket your phone and fly around to a pillar of land sticking up from the surrounding ground. It’s got a weird, bright red slab of stone on it, with a lighter red gear in the middle. It’s smooth to the touch, completely seamless all the way around. It’s important, probably, but you don’t know why yet, so you’ll leave it alone. You think that if you thought about it, you could probably puzzle it out, but these damn bells make it impossible to think of much past the basics of ‘That looks cool’ or ‘God, I don’t want to be here’. You hop back on your hoverboard and fly towards the gate over your house. Time to see where this fucker leads. Anywhere is better than here.

Once you get through the gate on your world your head rings with the sudden silence. The bells are gone, thank God, so you stash your headphones. Instead old marble ruins stretch out before you, and there are odd whispers you can’t really hear. The sun is shining over everything, and you feel a sense of peace you haven’t felt since you almost got hit by a fucking meteor. The serene air of the place makes you hop off your board. It seems rude to use it, for some reason. This place looks just like Shiro described it, which must mean that he’s here!

The gate deposited you on a hill, and you can see a few figures standing on top of a taller land spire. You figure you should go up there, soon, but you want to do a bit of recon, first. Something feels off.

A penguin waddles by you and stops, looking directly at you for a few moments. It lets out a weird squeaking noise and flaps one of its wings. Then it turns around and makes toward the spire base. You take a few cautious steps after it, but after a moment you follow more confidently. This yellow penguin isn’t going to hurt you, and you’d be able to beat it easily even if it tried. There are stairs, now that you look closer, spiraling around the column of land. You appreciate the gesture, but like hell are you climbing stairs. You take your board out and pat the penguin on the head and get going. The penguin squeaks behind you and waddles away. You’ll miss the little guy.

You hope you get to Shiro soon, hope that you still fit against him the way you used to. No sooner have you thought of your desire to see him than it seems you are near the top of the stairs. Weird game mechanics, ugh. You round the last curve of the tower just in time to see your boyfriend get speared through the middle by a giant purple monster.

He drops like a rag doll once the sword is out of his stomach, and you fall to your knees, sliding to his side. You press your hands against the gaping wound, barely aware of the purple people leaving behind you. Shiro is gasping, hands coming up to cup your face, blood getting all over the both of you. He’s dying, and you’re crying and you don’t know how to save him. His arm reaches out towards a slab of yellow stone nearer the middle of the space you’re in, but it looks weird. It takes you a moment to realize that his arm isn’t actually flesh, just a strange pulse of pale yellow that matches the … bed he’s trying to get to.

You do your best to help him, because it seems like Shiro is really trying to claw his way to this bed-thing. He uses the last of the strength in his legs to get you both there, with you holding his upper half as best you can. He coughs one more time, blood spattering the yellow stone, before his breathing rattles one more time, going silent. He’s… He’s gone. 

Your sobs can be heard for miles, you’re sure, but you don’t try to stifle yourself. You’re the only one around to hear them, anyway. You climb off the bed, because if you stay next to Shiro’s slowly cooling corpse any longer you’re going to be sick. You might be sick anyway. The blood is still everywhere, is still covering your hands, and the bit of your face where he touched you. It’s soaked into your clothes, pooling in your boots, clogging your nose with the iron smell.

You can barely see the purple people flying away in the distance, but you are overcome with such a rage it rattles your frame. They killed him. They killed him, so they have to pay. Some soft fuzzy puff balls are starting to float up towards you, towards Shiro. They start to land and your rage abates slightly so you can shoo them away. You don’t know if they’re scavengers, or whatever, but they can’t have him. They scatter slightly, but are still close enough that you know the instant you turn your back they’ll be right on him again. But those monsters are getting away.

You turn your back on Shiro, decaptchalouging your hover board. You’ll come back for him. But first, you have some assholes to take care of. You take off after them, trailing vapor in a line behind you. You seem to be catching up, but they disappear through a gate before you can gain much distance. You go through it, and are immediately assailed by the thick smell of pine trees. You swerve around large ivory towers, peering down at the pine trees on the ground. It looks a lot like Christmas came early here, light dusting of snow and all.

You follow them through another gate and you come into what must be Matt’s land. You have to swerve around stray asteroids that zip by you at lightning speed. You’ve lost sight of the two with the additional tax on your brain, but you find them again soon enough.

You close in on them. Those monsters that killed Shiro. You pull your knife out of your strife specibus and lower your center of gravity on the hoverboard. These fuckers are going to die. You get closer, and can see that they’re decked out in flowing robes and are flying totally unassisted. Not for much longer.

The closer you get, however, the weirder you start to feel. Your breath is stalling in your chest - your muscles don’t want to move the way you want them. It’s a paralysis of the worst kind, but the feeling recedes as the two people do. Through another gate they go and you follow from a distance. You are back on your world and you feel reinvigorated, despite the fact that those fucking bells are back, discordant clanging jarring your senses after the quiet of that other planet. You don’t care what kind of bullshit energy is surrounding them, you have a job to do. It’s not until you’re right on top of them do you realize you’ve been played.

The woman in the purple dress raises her hand at you and you feel things sort of narrow, until all you can feel is the choking aching pain of whatever is suddenly plaguing you. All you know is the fear curling itself around your spine and freezing your bones. The larger, hulking brute in dark green comes up to you and grabs you by the throat. He lifts you to your feet and higher, your legs dangling and lungs aching for air. You barely feel the sword being pushed through your diaphragm, through your lungs and into your heart. You feel the blade on its way out, though. The witch must have released whatever spell she had on you, because your hands are back, and they’re clutching at the ruined tatters of your shirt, trying to keep your blood inside your body.

The large man tosses you like a doll onto the slab of red stone, so similar to the one Shiro’s dead body is lying on right now. These must do something important, surely. Against the encroaching blackness, you see the two figures leaving. The bells – those fucking bells that were so infuriating – fade from your hearing. Things go dark, and things go quiet. It stops hurting. You die.

You are unsurprised to find that, objectively, dying sucks. This fact continues to remain not surprising, even as the pain fades into a numbness, until even that slips through your unresponsive fingers. You cannot feel your chest moving, cannot feel much beyond the cold that is sinking into your bones. Things sort of…stop.

You feel disconnected from your body, like you are outside of it, like it’s not yours anymore. There is an instant you wonder if this is what death is, then you stop thinking of much at all. The cold stops for a moment, before the pain starts anew, still muted, but much more present than it was a moment ago, until even that fades.

You open your eyes when you realize you can, only to find yourself floating in mid-air. There are red thumbless arm warmers going up to your elbows, with black boots to your mid-calf. You’re wearing a red tunic with red leggings. There’s a hood on your head, and when you raise your hands to your face, you find an eye mask there. You take it off and sure enough it’s as red as the rest of your outfit. You look down at your chest to see a light red gear emblazoned right in the center of what seems to be your new comfy pajama set. These clothes are really soft.

You look around at the land stretched out before you. You are not where you died. Strange. You can also fly now, which is cool but you aren’t entirely sure it was worth dying for. Speaking of – you look down at your chest, feeling the area where your insides were very recently becoming your outsides. It’s all healed up, with no pain to speak of. You look around at the black and white checkerboard land around you. There are more all white and all black warriors that are fighting, with plenty of dead already strewn around. Underneath it all is a steady pulse that matches up with the tick-tock of a clock. It’s gentle, soothing, and you lose yourself to the feeling for a moment (4.13 seconds, exactly) before you look up from the ground to find someone decked out in pale yellow flying towards you. There’s nowhere to hide, but as the person gets closer you realize that you’d never want to hide from him.

“Shiro!” He’s got a golden cape flapping behind him, and it comes to curl around you when his body crashes into yours. You hold on tight, getting squeezed equally hard back. You can’t see much past the yellow of the hood your face is tucked into and your tears are currently soaking, but that’s fine, that’s okay because this is Shiro. This is the love of your life come back to you after a year of being gone. You clutch tighter at his shoulders but ultimately pull away when Shiro does.

“Are you okay?” These are the first words you’ve heard him speak in a year and he’s all concern for you, as usual. You think you start crying again, but you also aren’t sure you actually stopped the first time.

“I mean, we both just died. But you’re here. That’s all I need.” You’re laughing, you think, but it’s probably because of the hysteria and all of the emotions threatening to suffocate you. Shiro starts laughing, too, and you’d forgotten what a beautiful sound that was. You’ve forgotten so many things about this boy in front of you, but you swear to yourself that you’ll stay with him forever, no matter what happens now.

“I’m so sorry. I never wanted any of this to happen to you.” It’s been a year, but he hasn’t changed in the slightest. Your heart is so achingly full.

“I love you.” Shiro’s smile can only be described as blinding. His right hand comes up to cup your face, but he stops before he makes contact. He’s not looking at you anymore, instead staring at his hand, which is a shining golden mass.

“I…” Shiro’s hand closes into a fist that drops to his side. “Keith, you know I love you, too. That could never change, but –“ Shiro takes a sharp breath in through his teeth. “I’m not- I don’t- I’m not good for you, anymore. Being here, for this long… I’m not the same person who left.”

You grab at Shiro’s shoulders, shaking him. Doesn’t he realize?

“You are still you, Shiro. I am always, no matter what, going to want you.” He’s looking at you like you aren’t real, like you’re some sort of dream. You don’t know how to assure him so you do what you’ve been wanting to do since you found out he was here.

Kissing Shiro, you think, will never get old. The small squeak he makes at the beginning whenever he’s surprised, running your hands through his undercut, feeling him wrap himself around you. You could die kissing Shiro and you don’t think you’d mind.

You pull away from him before things can get too heavy, but you can’t resist another kiss when he trails after your lips. It’s just as sweet as the last, just as sweet as you remember him being. You pull back again and have to tell yourself not to kiss him again until you talk about this. And this is something that needs to be talked about.

“It’s good to have you back.” With me, you don’t say, but you know Shiro heard it.

“It’s good to be back.” With you. Your hands trail down Shiro’s arms, along the white undershirt of his undead pajamas and hold both of his hands. The golden one pulses a tiny bit with what you can only assume is Shiro’s heartbeat. It’s warm to the touch, but it’s not like you expect any part of Shiro to be cold towards you.

“You have to know that no matter what happened to you, no matter who you think you are now…” You’ve never been good with words, and you’re fucking this up already, but you don’t know how to make Shiro see that he means everything to you. “You have to know I will always be right next to you, through everything.” You smile up at him and place a hand on his cheek. “I’ll always love you.” His hand comes up to cover yours and he smiles gently at you.

“For better or for worse?” The heat rises to your face faster than you can duck your head to hide it. It’s not like you hadn’t imagined saying those words to Shiro, or Shiro saying them to you, but it was generally under different circumstances. You look back up at him, your face probably as red as your outfit.

“Let’s beat this damn game, and we’ll see.” You separate, keeping your hands clasped between you, and look around at the battlefield around you. First things first- you have to get the rest of your team here.

brassKnuckles [BK]  began pestering pricelessPolymer [PP]  at 6:01!

BK: Keith to Pidge  
BK: do you copy  
PP: Yeah, I’m here.  
PP: And by here I mean in the game  
PP: Hunk got me in a few hours ago.  
PP: What have you been up to?  
BK: oh you know the usual  
BK: watching my boyfriend die  
BK: dying  
BK: getting resurrected with these dope ass pajamas  
BK: reuniting with my also resurrected boyfriend  
BK: the works  
PP: Wow, Keith, sounds eventful  
PP: Anyway, I’ll take that to mean you’ve been sitting on your ass doing nothing.  
PP: Try and work on your quests, okay?  
PP: My consorts are telling me that they’re really important in the scheme of things.  
BK: yeah sure okay Pidge  
BK: whatever you say  
BK: keep me updated on shit and stuff  
BK: Keith out  


brassKnuckles [BK]  ceased pestering pricelessPolymer [PP]  at 6:12!

Okay, Pidge is in-game and working on stuff. You look back at Shiro, who’s flying around the battlefield, cape trailing behind him. He’s not quite smiling, but he’s also doing tricks and flips so he can’t be too far from happy. You look around as well, before looking up into the sky. You can see a giant golden moon, which actually looks really familiar. Holy shit, that’s the dream place you went to. Which means that that other player you saw earlier is up there, too. You look back over to Shiro only to find he’s already looking at you. He comes closer until he’s within speaking distance.

“We should go check on Allura. Last time I talked to her she was in a little bit of trouble.” You nod and begin to fly up to the golden moon but Shiro grabs your hand. “I meant the not dreamer version of her. Her dreamself should be safe on Prospit for now, but I’m not so sure how she’s doing on her land.” You shrug and gesture for him to lead the way. He links his fingers with yours, sending a warmth through your toes, and pulls you in the other direction. Now that you sort of know what to look for, you can see another planet in the distance.

It doesn’t take as long to get there as you thought it would, which is minorly disconcerting considering the continual pulse of time that thrums in your head. Once you get close to the surface you realize you were on this planet only a little while ago (46.7 minutes (God, it hasn’t even been an hour since you died)). The ivory towers are just as imposing as they were earlier, but easier to navigate now that you can fly on your own. The trees are thich below, and you can see some sort of creature hopping between the pines. Frogs? In this game? It’s more likely than you thought, apparently. Never mind the purple monsters that killed you, or Shiro’s multicolored penguins, or even your own weird lizard things. Just normal Earth frogs, chilling out in some weird, murdery death game.

“Do you know where she is?” You would like to find her sooner rather than later, particularly if she’s in danger and there are still those two murdering assholes out there somewhere. Shiro shrugs, and doesn’t that look weird when he’s flying.

“She said she was by her house, so I think we should start there and work our way out.” Speaking of her house, you can see it now, hidden between pillars of ivory. It looks a little bit more like a castle to you, frankly, but you haven’t seen that many castles outside of fiction for reference. The whole thing is white with blue detailing, banners flying from towers and a big gate for a door. There’s a dead body at the front steps.

“Fuck, are they just killing everybody?” You get closer to who can only be Allura and your breath sticks in your throat. At least when you died, there hadn’t been that much blood, and when Shiro died you were more focused on him than his blood. But that – you have to look away. God, you hope she was dead before they did most of that.

“Oh no. Okay, wait.” Shiro bends down next to her before grabbing Allura by the face. He… kisses her? He rights himself and wipes some blood from his mouth.

“Shiro, what the fuck?” You are trying not to be grossed out, but fuck it you are failing. “Like, what the actual, literal, fuck?” He at least has the decency to look embarrassed about laying one on a dead girl, and you are momentarily distracted by the blush. Wait, no, first things first.

“If her dreamself is still alive, she can wake up on Prospit and control that body. The game just has a weird way of making that happen.” You have almost no idea what to do with that information, given that you don’t exactly know what a dreamself is.

“What the hell is Prospit?” Shiro laughs, but not because anything seems particularly funny.

“Sorry, I’ve just been here so long…” He looks you in the eye, and your soul hurts. “Prospit and Derse are the two moons of Skaia. Allura is on Prospit for reasons, just like you were. Matt and I both dream on Derse, but I don’t think he’s woken up yet. Your dreamself is the part of you that’s active whenever your primary body is asleep.” Shiro rubs at his golden arm. “When we died, we got to go Godtier because our dreamselves were alive. Now that Allura’s primary body is dead, she’s gonna have a harder time of it.” You float there, rather dumbfounded. That is a lot of information, only some of which makes actual sense to you.

“Godtier?” Sure, the pajamas are comfy (still not worth dying for), but you wouldn’t call them god-worthy or anything. Before Shiro can do much more than open his mouth to explain, another him appears next to you. What the fuck.

“You guys need to move. Zarkon killed Matt and is going after his dreamself. You don’t have much time. Get to Derse.” He whirls around and takes off soon after speaking, so you can’t ask him any questions. You look to Shiro, who looks shaken.

“We need to go to Derse. How fast do you think you can fly?” You think you can go fast enough and you tell him so before he takes off in the direction that you assume Derse must be in. Shit, so much is happening. You pull your phone out; might as well find out where everybody else is.

brassKnuckles [BK]  created the memo “Hellscape”! 

brassKnuckles [BK] added pricelessPolymer [PP], yikesParticipant [YP], and peachyYouth [PY] to the forum!

BK: okay guys whats the sitch  
YP: W o w Mullethead  
YP: Ask a more vague question why don’t you  
PY: Lance, leave Keith alone :(  
PY: But we’re all in the game now, Keith :)  
PP: Yeah, and Lance was the server for some other guy who got lost and found our group, apparently?  
YP: Pidge no I found him years ago when I was a kid   
YP: I was playing an arcade game or something  
YP: I didn’t think he was a real person back then!  
YP: But long story short, he was/is and he was my client  
YP: And he ended up being Hunk’s server  
PY: Yeah, he was pretty nice :)  
PY: But he was kinda weird  
PP: Anyway, we’re all here.  
PP: What’s happening on your end?  
BK: oh you know, bouta save Matt from his imminent demise because a future version of Shiro came back through time to warn us  
BK: also apparently Shiro kissed a dead girl and brought her back to life  
YP: Shiro is here???  
YP: Like the guy who’s house got surprise meteored a year ago?  
YP: Takashi Shirogane???  
BK: my boyfriend  
BK: Takashi Shirogane  
BK: yeah he’s here  
BK: has been since he went missing  
YP: No way  
YP: What does he see in you???  
PY: Lance, be a little more considerate!  
PY: This is someone who Keith thought was dead for a year!  
PY: Have some tact :|  
BK: thanks Hunk but its fine  
BK: frankly i think im still in shock  
BK: cause we both got killed and got brought back to life  
BK: and there hasnt been time to breathe since that happened  
BK: cause people keep dying  
BK: but hey ill have that breakdown later  
PY: Keith that can’t be healthy :O  
PP: Oh, it’s definitely not, but isn’t that how it always goes?  
PP: Anyway, I’ve found something interesting.  
BK: spill Pidge  
PP: As you wish.  
PP: We appear to be in different games.  
BK: wait what  
YP: What do you mean???  
PY: Isn’t this all one big game?  
PP: Apparently not.  
PP: Initially, I believed that the five of us would have one session together  
PP: But that is not the case.  
PP: In fact, the session that Hunk, Lance, Coran and I are in seems to be a void session  
PP: As we are missing two major factors involved in the success of a session:  
PP: A Space player and a Time player.  
PP: The guide I’ve been following is piecey, but adamant that we have those two things, otherwise the session is doomed to fail.  
BK: wait back up  
BK: do you know why were in different sessions  
PP: I have an idea.  
YP: Spill it, Pidge!!!  
PP: I think it’s because of those other people in your session, actually, Keith.  
PP: They aren’t supposed to be there.  
PP: I think they broke the rules to get into your universe, so to speak, and as such the game could not get us into the same session.  
PP: At least, that is what I think happened.  
PP: Some coding gone wrong during execution.  
PY: Is there any way we can un-void our session?  
PP: Not that I can find.  
PP: Ideally, and it seems this happened to the person who wrote the guide,  
PP: They had an adjacent group in a void session that they commandeered and made into a playable session.  
PP: Apparently they won the ultimate reward, too.  
YP: So Mullethead needs to save us???  
YP: I don’t think so  
YP: He can’t do anything!!!  
BK: he is also capable of reading comprehension Lance  
BK: and dont worry Pidge  
BK: well get on that as soon as we save Matt  
BK: anyway gotta go  


brassKnuckles [BK] closed the forum “Hellscape”! 

You’re coming up on a purple moon, which you assume to be Derse. It seems to be the opposite of Prospit, so you find the tower Matt is in soon enough. He’s still asleep – you still aren’t sure about the whole waking/sleeping thing – but from what future-Shiro said, he won’t stay that way for long.

Sure enough, you can feel those assholes approaching before you see them. Things narrow and start getting colder, more hopeless. They’re still far enough away that you can probably make a run for it, but Shiro’s yellow clothes stand out against the color scheme of the planet. You’re bright red isn’t exactly subtle either. Shiro grabs your hand and you feel… weird isn’t how you’d put it, but there isn’t really a word for this feeling.

It’s kind of like being filled up with light, feels like being burned from the inside out by sunlight instead of fire, feels like you’re splitting apart atom by atom even as you are fused together in the heart of a star. You send out a prayer that you’ll have enough time to save Matt, and suddenly the tick-tock of the universe slows to a crawl. Shiro lets go of your hand to lean against the wall.

“What the hell just happened?” He looks paler than usual, and you don’t feel too good yourself. But there isn’t any outside feeling of dread that’s coursing through you, so you think you know what changed.

“I think we just fucked with time. Now there’s no time to waste, let’s go.” Shiro grabs Matt from where he’s still sleeping on his bed and you both jump back out the window and start flying. Your phone chimes with a Pesterchum notification. Weird. You should check that.

Future!brassKnuckles [FBK] began pestering Current!brassKnuckles [BK] 3:15 hours from now! 

FBK: okay listen i dont have much time but listen to me  
CBK: what the fuck is happening  
FBK: literally just wait two and a half hours everything becomes much more of a shit show  
FBK: youre a time player  
FBK: Allura is the space player  
FBK: you are both imperative to winning the game  
FBK: but first Matt has to die  
CBK: whoa whoa wait what the fuck  
CBK: why does Matt have to die  
FBK: hes a void player  
FBK: so you need him to unvoid the other session  
FBK: but hes gotta die for you to use your powers together the way you have to  
FBK: apparently there are ways to combine powers and shit  
FBK: i dont know but whatever he is is powerful but not when hes asleep  
CBK: but hes already dead  
CBK: Zarkon killed him i guess  
CBK: thats what future Shiro said  
FBK: speaking of you have to send Shiro through time  
FBK: i dont remember having done that when i first messaged me  
FBK: ugh time bullshit  
FBK: anyway you should do that  
FBK: chop chop  
CBK: how  
CBK: im not exactly a time travelling pro  
FBK: ill walk you through it  
FBK: but first  
FBK: once you send Shiro back, you’ll need to take Matt back to derse and kill him  
FBK: in the core of the satellite moon is his sacrificial slab  
FBK: kill him on that and he’ll go godtier  
CBK: wait you want me to what  
CBK: i cant kill my best friend  
FBK: then you all die  
FBK: if you dont kill Matt the session is doomed and you all die  
FBK: i killed him and he wasnt even offended  
FBK: im sorry but this has to happen  
CBK: jesus christ  
CBK: okay  
CBK: how do i send Shiro back  
FBK: just think about the moment you saw him appear from the future  
FBK: and then imagine stealing all of the time in between him and that moment  
FBK: thats what we do  
FBK: we steal time  
FBK: and were fucking good at it  
CBK: okay holy shit he disappeared what now  
FBK: now you have to go kill Matt  
FBK: good luck  


Future!brassKnuckles [FBK] ceased pestering Current!brassKnuckles [BK] 3:56 hours from now! 

Matt is floating out in space now that Shiro isn’t holding him anymore. God, you hope Shiro doesn’t hold any of this against you. Fuck, you should’ve talked to him. But nothing has changed in the current moment, so by all fictional laws of time travel, everything should be fine in the past, right? Sure, why the hell not.

You grab Matt and turn back to start flying the way you came. Fuck, you’re going to kill him. You feel sick just thinking about it, but apparently it all works out, according to future you. Jesus, you talked to a future version of yourself, because apparently you control time or some bullshit like that. This game is so fucked up. It killed you and Shiro and Allura and it’s going to be the reason you kill Matt. This was not the afternoon you had planned out when you woke up this morning, that’s for fucking sure.

Derse, in all of its purple glory, is getting closer by the second. There’s no accompanying sense of dread, so the murdery assholes must have bailed. 

So Matt’s… sacrificial slab (???) is in the moon of the moon, which is connected to the main moon by a thick purple chain. Sure. It’s not like this can get any weirder. You pull Matt’s unconscious body behind you as you fly up into the smaller moon. It’s deeper than you expected it to be, but you reach the center eventually. There’s a dark blue slab of stone, right next to a yellow one that looks just like the rock that Shiro bled out on. You lose yourself in that memory for a moment (22.31 seconds) before coming back to yourself. Okay, time to do this. Fuck, you don’t want to kill him.

You put Matt down on the stone, laying him down like he could be sleeping. Which he is, kind of, you guess. Not for long though. But hey, if he’s asleep, he shouldn’t even feel it. And he’s already dead, anyway, so it’s nothing he hasn’t felt before. God, that was the least motivating pep talk you have ever given yourself. You just have to do this. Just fucking kill him, Keith, get it together.

You pull your knife out of your sylladex. Your hand is sweaty on the pommel and you take a breath to steady yourself. A clean stab, right through the heart. He’ll be dead before he realizes it. And he won’t realize it, because as you’ve noticed before, he’s asleep. God damn it, Kogane, just get it fucking over with. You have the assurance that everything will be fine between the two of you even though you kill him, so you are literally worrying over nothing. On three. One. Two.

Fuck, you can’t fucking do this. Your breathing is coming much too fast, blurring your vision in your hyperventilation. No, just calm down. Okay. You got this. Just pretend like this is not your best friend who you’d die for without question. Just pretend like this isn’t Matt fucking Holt, who let you cry into his shoulder when your boyfriend went missing under mysterious circumstances, who let you rant about aliens and conspiracies after one too many X-Files episodes in a row. Just pretend that Matt isn’t someone who means a whole fucking lot to you. Your phone pings.

Future!brassKnuckles [FBK] began pestering Current!brassKnuckles [BK] 2.31 hours from now! 

FBK: you dont have to pretend you know  
FBK: Matt means a lot to us  
FBK: but if you dont kill him we will never see him again  
FBK: please  
FBK: dont make us lose our best friend to this fucking game  
CBK: i dont know if i can do this  
CBK: i know you said you did  
CBK: but i just  
CBK: i dont know  
FBK: i know this sucks  
FBK: i was you  
FBK: i am you  
FBK: but i promise that if you kill him, you’ll see him again  
FBK: if you dont  
FBK: this is it  
FBK: we lose him to this game  
FBK: i cant lose him  
CBK: youre right  
CBK: we cant lose him  
CBK: im not losing anyone else to this fucking game  
FBK: thank you  


Future!brassKnuckles [FBK] ceased pestering Current!brassKnuckles [BK] 2.52 hours from now! 

You take a deep breath. You feel oddly disconnected from your body. But the future version of you is right. You refuse to lose your best fucking friend to this stupid fucking game. It’s not fucking happening. You drive the knife into Matt’s chest. The steady rise and fall of his breathing halts. You pull the knife out, and blood drips from the blade. You think you might be sick. Before you can decide one way or the other about being physically ill, however, a blinding light comes from Matt as his body lifts off of the stone.

You close your eyes against it, but the afterimage of Matt’s body stands out against your eyelids. The glowing fades and you open your eyes again, but everything is still kind of overshadowed by the burning of your retinas. You still can’t see quite right when you hear a voice you never thought you’d hear again.

“What the fuck?” It’s Matt, he’s fucking alive and you launch yourself at the source of the voice. You collide with a body and you wrap your arms around it. You continue moving for a few feet, but your motion stops when Matt hugs you back. “Hey, Keith. Good to see you buddy.” You squeeze Matt tighter. God, you killed him 1.07 minutes ago. “You okay, buddy?” Oh, you’re crying. Fuck. You sniffle and pull back from Matt to wipe at your eyes.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Your voice cracks in the middle and you start crying again, so Matt is less than convinced. He ruffles a hand through your hair. You’re so glad you have him back. “How are you doing? You did just die.” I did just kill you. But no, you need to get yourself under control before you go around telling people that you killed Matt so he could come back to life.

“Oh, I’m feeling pretty good. Digging the new threads. The design is a little weird, though.” You take a step (does it count as a step if you’re floating in mid-air?) back from him and you see what he means. Matt’s got a conical hat encasing his head, with strips of dark blue hanging down his back, kind of like a cape. They swish whenever he moves, which he’s doing a lot of, because he’s flying over your shoulder to crash into someone behind you. “Shiro!” You turn to see the pair of them hugging like you and Matt were just a couple of seconds ago (6.46 (God, can you shut that off, you hate knowing exact times, it’s weird)).

“I’m so glad to see you’re okay! I mean, I saw you earlier, but apparently that was a different you? He was wearing this thing, though.” Matt cocks his head at Shiro as Shiro pulls at one of the trailing strips of Matt’s cape.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Shiro shrugs.

“A future version of you came back in time after I got back from going back in time and told me to get here.” Shiro turned towards you. “Also, a little warning next time, Keith? Travelling through time is kinda weird.” You clap a hand to your forehead.

“I’m so sorry! A future version of me Pestered me and kind of walked me through the process and I didn’t realize it was going to, like, actually work. When and where did Matt find you? I’ll have to know where to send him.” Matt puts his hands up between the two of you.

“Wait, wait, wait. I just got here, why are you sending me somewhere else?” You direct a grin at him in a way you hope is comforting. You point a hand at him and wiggle your fingers.

“Time shenanigans, man. I don’t make the rules; I just have to follow them so we don’t all die.” Matt’s hands drop.

“Well, shit, man, that sounds pretty metal. Ugh, fine I’ll do my bros a favor and keep everyone alive by being sent back in time. Zap me, K.” You look to Shiro, who is rolling his eyes.

“I still need a time and a place. Shiro?” He refocuses on you, frowning in thought.

“Uh, I saw him maybe 15 minutes ago?” The same voice in your head that’s been spewing times corrects him (17.25 minutes ago). Maybe that is helpful for not causing paradoxes. “And I was about halfway between my planet and here. You nod and reach your hands out towards Matt. He tenses up, then disappears. You think you’re getting better at this time thing. There was a subtle chiming you’d had in the back of your head but it’s gone now, and you suppose that’s a time loop that’s resolved. Cool. Shiro flies up to you, but stays out of touching distance. “Why’d you come back here? I thought it wasn’t safe?”

“A future version of myself told me to, around when I zapped you back in time.” You rub at the back of your neck. “Sorry about that by the way. Should’ve given you some warning.” You look up at him, and his brow is still furrowed.

“How’d he die?” There’s a look in Shiro’s eye that you really don’t like because – “There’s no one else here.” You wince, and you know he sees, but, fuck, you didn’t want Matt to not be the first person you told about killing him. You open your mouth, then close it again, because you really have no idea what to say. Shiro’s eyes are starting to widen; he looks like he’d rather be anywhere but here.

“I didn’t want to!” He’s looking at you like you’re a monster, and you are not a monster, you swear, you’re going to have nightmares about that moment for months, years, until the day you die and stay fucking dead. “I didn’t want to kill him, you have to believe me, Shiro. But there was no other way to save him and –“ Shiro’s voice is cold when he speaks over you.

“Let me guess. A future version of you told you to do it.”

“Yes! Yes! I can show you what he said, please, Shiro, you have to know that the last thing I’d want to do is kill Matt! He’s my best fucking friend.” You’re crying again, because Shiro is still looking at you like he’s disgusted, like he’s –

“I can’t believe you, Keith. I thought I could still love you, but you’ve gone somewhere I can’t follow. I didn’t want to have to do this.” His arm lights up, but it’s a cold purple, not the yellow it’s been. That’s when you realize: he’s not wearing his pajamas. Shiro is not wearing his bright yellow cape and hood, is not wearing what he was wearing when he left you, and that has to mean something, because this Shiro is coming at you, arm purple and pulsing and ready to run you through. You dodge the attack coming toward you, but Shiro is fast, almost as fast as you are, so you turn tail and fly, because that’s all you can do. Matt is probably going to come back here in a few minutes and you need to be out of here when he does so he doesn’t get caught in the crossfire.

“Shiro, stop!” You have to try to talk to him. Maybe he can be reasoned with, because even if this isn’t your Shiro, some part of him in there must love you. You break out of Derse’s moon and start flying without any real destination in mind. Shiro’s catching up to you, so you don’t think you’ll be able to make it anywhere even if you knew a where to make it to. Think, Keith, think! What can you do?

“Keith, what’s happening?” Shiro is flying toward you, but he’s in all yellow with that ridiculous fucking cape floating behind him and you could cry with relief if you weren’t already cried out for the day because it’s been a long day (you’ve been in the game for 7.39 hours (shit, it hasn’t even been a full day yet)) and honestly you kind of just want to sleep for a bit. But sleep as in wake up from it, not sleep as in die because you’ve already done that once today and you’d rather not do it again. Shiro’s yellow arm lights up and clashes against other-Shiro’s purple arm. “Keith, get out of here!”

“Not without you!” You can think of something, you have to think of something. The blows between the two Shiro’s sound intense, if the weirdly not-quite-metal-clanging of their arms colliding is anything to go by. Time, time, time, what the fuck can you do with time? Future you said you stole time, so what if you can steal the time from things? And by things you mean what if you stole time from not-Shiro and gave it to your Shiro?

As soon as the thought forms in your head you see not-Shiro glitch into a stand-still, and your Shiro slices his purple arm clean off with his own yellow one. God that looks kind of gross, because the arm hasn’t quite detached, because you’ve still got him frozen in time and Shiro moving extra fast, so there’s no blood coming out, but there is a distinct, palm width space between not-Shiro’s shoulder and his arm. Fuck, you guys have to get out of there.

“Shiro, we need to go, come on.” Your voice is coming too-fast, and you worry about it for the split-second before that time voice in your head tells you that it’s just because you stole the time from not-Shiro and gave it to your Shiro and your time powers have let you catch up to him. Shiro turns toward you with a dazed look on his face. There’s blood on his arm. He nods and turns to follow where you fly. You wait until you can’t see not-Shiro anymore, and the stuck clock hand in your chest is too unbearably painful to keep frozen. You let him go and breathe out harshly as the pain recedes. Apparently the universe doesn’t like being out of alignment, and will let you know its fucking displeasure.

“Keith, what was that? What’s happening?” Your phone is going off in your back pocket, but you can’t be assed to check it right now, because the two of you are still flying at breakneck speeds and you can’t lose concentration.

“I don’t know, but we need to get somewhere safe. Got anywhere in mind?” Shiro points toward a bright speck on the horizon.

“Matt’s planet is probably our best bet. He’s void, and he’ll go back there eventually even if we don’t message him, but his aspect is probably ingrained enough in the planet that it might shield us.” That sounds like a load of bullshit to you, but hey, Shiro’s been in this game 8,752.59 more hours than you’ve been, so you’ll take his word for the weird pseudo magic shit that goes on around here. Matt’s planet is getting closer and closer, so the two of you slow down to enter atmosphere. Actually, do you even have to in this game? You can breathe in space, so you aren’t sure which laws of physics apply out here and which ones you can ignore. Well, you slow down, and it gives you time to pull out your phone and see who’s been messaging you.

moonlightAscending [MA]  began trolling  brassKnuckles [BK]  at 8:32! 

MA: I hope you liked my little toy  
MA: He was quite the Gift you Gave me  
MA: A poor little time clone who just wanted meaninG  
BK: are you talking about that alternate Shiro  
MA: We call him Kuron  
MA: I thouGht it was fittinG  
BK: thats clone in japanese  
BK: what did you do to him  
MA: I just Gave him a little boost  
MA: I made him a real person  
MA: Flesh and blood and a whole lot of raGe  
MA: Goodbye Keith  
MA: I’d say Good luck  
MA: But you’d need a liGht player for that  


moonlightAscending [MA] blocked brassKnuckles [BK]!

You have no clue what just happened, really. Some crazy broad brought that time fragment of Shiro to life, somehow, using some bullshit game powers, and then fucking insulted you like you aren’t good enough to kick “Kuron’s” ass all by yourself. Luck your ass. If it means protecting Shiro – your Shiro – you’ll do whatever it takes, as many times as it takes. You’re in the upper atmosphere of Matt’s planet now, and small comets are streaking past you. Some keep going until they pass over the horizon, but some of them hit the ocean below. There are ships dotted on the ocean, the ocean that takes up most of the planet, now that you’re looking. There are small patches of land, but they’re few and far between. You land on the decks of one of the ships, which is more difficult than it sounds when you don’t account for the movement of the boat. You land on your face instead of your feet, and Shiro only laughs a little instead of a lot.

“You okay, baby?” Shiro’s voice is still high with breathless laughter, but the pet name makes your nose sting just a little bit less. Still hurts like a fucker, though.

“Yeah, I’m fine. What about you?” You step close enough to him to grab both his hands. “You did just fight another version of yourself. Which, might be my fault, actually.” You tell Shiro what MA told you, and you can see on his face how little he understands it. “So it goes like this: when we combined our powers, somehow, we messed with time enough that one of their players could grab enough of you to create a clone, basically.” Shiro looks more confused than ever. “So moonlightAscending, whoever the hell they are, used whatever fucky powers they have to make an alternate alpha version of you. He’s a different person, but he’s also you.”

“That makes no sense.” You groan, but he’s not wrong. “I’ll just take your word for all of this.” He sits down on the deck of the ship and pulls his phone out. “I’m gonna Pester Matt. One sec.” You take a stroll around the ship and let him do his thing. He must be so happy to have Matt back. Before you and Shiro started dating, the three of you were best friends, and honestly, not much changed after you did start dating. Matt just made a lot more sex jokes and you and Shiro kissed sometimes. Shiro pockets his phone and joins you at the railing, overlooking the sea. “He’s on his way. I told him to watch out for any Shiro that isn’t with a Keith.” You warm at that.

“So you’re assuming I’ll always let you hang around?” You’re smiling, and he is too, and fuck you missed this.

“Only because I know you love me.” He’s smiling so wide, and it’s stretching his new scar where it crosses his cheeks and you just have to kiss him. He doesn’t hesitate to kiss you back, and you kind of lose yourself in him. You pull back after 14.38 seconds.

“You know I do, you God damn disaster. I love you so fucking much.” You pull him in again, but that kiss doesn’t last as long (9.43 seconds) because Matt dive bombs the two of you, and you all go overboard and land in the ocean. Fuck this water is fucking cold. It takes you a moment to find the surface, and you take a deep breath once your head comes above the water. Though, it was kind of weird – you didn’t really need to hold your breath under the water? You were also flying through space earlier without an air supply and you were fine, so maybe it’s the game mechanics? Eh, whatever, it doesn’t really matter.

“Hey guys!” Matt is already floating above the water and you take a moment to levitate yourself as well. Shiro isn’t far behind. “I didn’t see any weird shit on my way here, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t weird shit out there!” His grin is shit-eating and bright. “By weird shit I mean the alternate version of Shiro he told me about. That’s some weird shit.”

“Yes, Matt, we know that that’s some weird shit. We don’t know how to fix it either, but what we kind of know how to fix is your sister not being in our game. So let’s get on that, shall we?” You go to wring some of the water out of your gloves, but your clothes are already dry. Or maybe they never got wet in the first place? Whatever, you have other shit to be doing. “Give me your hands.” You float up to stand on the deck of the ship once more, and Matt stands opposite from you. You join hands just as Shiro lands next to you.

“Okay, so what do we do?” Matt shifts where he’s standing, following the rocking of the boat. A comet lands in the water beside the ship, splashing the deck.

“So the future version of me said that they’re in a void session. You, apparently, have void powers. So we are going to work together to un-void their timeline. Well, not their timeline really. Their session, but because their session is void, our timelines are doomed. So we have to un-doom our timelines by un-voiding their session. Did that make sense?” Matt is staring at you like you have six heads, so you’re going to guess that that did not make sense. “Does it matter that it doesn’t make sense?” Matt shrugs.

“I mean, I don’t really care about the reasoning behind this, I’d just really like to see my sister again.” You shrug. That’s good enough for you. “So how does this work?”

“I think we have to focus on their session and bring them into our session, which un-dooms the timeline… How about you work on the void aspect, and making it not void, and I’ll make sure we land in a not doomed timeline, sound good?” Matt nods his head.

“Sounds good.” The two of you hold each other’s hands a little tighter, and you close your eyes. You get a weird feeling, like you did earlier when you did something like this with Shiro. The red strings of time fan out before you, and you can hear the deep bell chime of the alpha timeline. You can also feel how your timeline is just slightly off from that steady rhythm. Suddenly, you can feel something like a clicking, like gear teeth that don’t line up just right. It’s Matt, with the session your other friends are in. Touching that void-space feels weird, but the alpha timeline demands that session be a part of your session, so you sort of…braid the two time-strings together until they fuse into the cord of the alpha timeline. You stroke your finger along the thread of time that all of you are in together now, and it ticks under your fingers. The time pulse in your ears matches the chime of the alpha bells. You guys did it.

Matt disconnects from you before you’re really ready for it, because time is all you can see, and it’s jarring to be hurled back into one sense of being. After being stretched across time like that, living second by second feels slow. You turn to Shiro and fall into his arms. Your legs seem to be made of jelly, which kind of makes sense because breaking the rules like that took a whole lot of effort. You can barely move your arms to hold onto where Shiro is grabbing your waist. There’s a new planet in the distance, which you can only assume belongs to one of the players from the other session. You can’t really be bothered to do more than assume that though, because you’d really like to sit down. Maybe take a nap. Shiro pulls a pouch of water from his sylladex and hands it to you. You sip greedily, and hold it out to Matt when the other boy makes grabby hands for it.

“I don’t like how time feels. It’s all stretchy and,” he wiggles his fingers where they aren’t curled around the water pouch, “not a good feeling.” You laugh a little bit.

“I could say the same about void. It’s all empty and there’s nothing to hold onto.” Matt shrugs.

“There’s stuff there if you know what to look for.” That’s an odd thing to say, you think, but hey, not your aspect, not your sandbox. Matt can do his void thing as much as he wants, you just don’t want to do it with him, ever again. Your phone buzzes in your back pocket. You’ll get it later. It buzzes again, like it can tell you want to ignore it. Ugh, you should pick check it.

Future!brassKnuckles [FBK] began pestering Current!brassKnuckles [CBK] 7.56 hours from now! 

FBK: so you should tell him  
FBK: and also dont forget you have to message your past self soon  
FBK: lot of shit to keep track of as a time player  
FBK: also congrats on getting your team together  
CBK: thanks  
CBK: and yeah  
CBK: ill tell him right now  
CBK: thanks for everything  
FBK: dont thank me  
FBK: i feel like thats a weird form of narcissism  
FBK: just dont fuck anything up  


Future!brassKnuckles [FBK] ceased pestering Current!brassKnuckles [CBK] 8.09 hours from now! 

You really should tell him. You know it all works out. You take a deep breath.

“Hey, Matt.” His head swivels around to look at you. “I’m sorry for killing you earlier, but I wanted you back.” You suppose that’s not the worst way you could have told him, but there were probably better ways, too. His eyes get a little wider.

“You killed me?” You nod, and wow that was more effort than it should have been.

“Yeah, it’s how you went Godtier. Because you were asleep, and you weren’t gonna wake up, and I really didn’t want to lose you. I couldn’t -” you break off, because suddenly you’re crying even though you definitely didn’t authorize that. But no, your eyes decided to just let the waterworks go. It makes you feel a little better, though. Matt comes to stand over you and with the comets lighting up the sky behind him, you can’t make out his face, but he hates you, he has to hate you, you killed him.

“Keith.” There’s something off about his voice, and you can’t read him, not when you can’t see his face and you can’t understand that weird tone of his voice. Something wet hits your face. “It’s okay.” Matt collapses onto you, and he’s crying, and you’re crying, and Shiro might be crying, too, you aren’t really sure, but Matt is holding on so tight to you that breathing is a little hard. You don’t want him to let go for anything. Thankfully, it doesn’t seem that he wants to let you go either. “It’s okay.” You bury your face in his hair, eyes shut tight. You all cry for a few minutes (7.19) and you all pull away from each other, still sniffling.

“I really am sorry.” You go to apologize some more, but Matt waves you away.

“Honestly?” He tilts his head to look at you, and god that blue hat looks fucking ridiculous. “If I were in your shoes, I probably would have killed me, too.” He looks down at his hands, and it seems a little like he’s reaching for something. “When we combined our powers, I saw other doomed or void timelines, and I was dead in most of them.” His hand drops back to his lap. “And I didn’t really like being dead, either.” Your hand reaches out to grab his, and Shiro closes in on you both, slinging an arm around each of you. The glowing yellow of his prosthetic arm is warm against your back. You fiddle with Matt’s fingers and try to think of something to say.

“We should go find the others.” Shiro beats you to it, bringing reason back to your little group. “We don’t know who’s running around out there.” And yeah- all three of you were killed by that Zarkon douche today, weren’t you? Ugh, fuck that guy. You hope you never have to see him again. You all stand up and right your clothes, which bunched up and wrinkled during your cuddle session. “Ready to go?” Matt throws Shiro a thumbs up and you nod when they look at you. You aren’t entirely sure what to expect but it can’t be too bad. After all, you have Shiro and you have Matt.

You take off from the deck of the ship when they do, and the pace isn’t too bad, but it’s fast enough that you’ll get to the next planet soon. It’s not as far as it looks, you realize as you get closer. It’s just that the planet is small. You enter atmosphere, or what should be the atmosphere (you still aren’t sure how the hell physics works in this damn game), and see large buildings made of concrete and steel. Glass panels reflect some unknown light source at you, and there are giant padlocks, electrical locks, manual bolts, all types of locks everywhere. On some other glass panels, coding scrolls by as if on a giant computer, and you have a feeling that this might be Pidge’s world. Your suspicions are confirmed when you hear an inhuman screech and you see Matt tackle a small person in green on the ground. They shriek, too, and Shiro zips over to you.

“So, that’s Pidge, right?” You nod, not entirely sure what to do with the situation. You never really had siblings, and you still aren’t sure how they work. Are they like, intensely close friends? Enemies? Both? With the way Matt talks about Pidge most of the time, you’d think it was the former, but sometimes he’d call her names that shouldn’t be repeated in polite company whenever she touched his stuff. Which, fair enough. If someone touched your stuff you’d have a problem with that, too. He’s swinging her around in a full body air hug where he’s started floating above the ground. You take the moment to look around you some more. There are burn marks on some of the buildings, and you can see a few cat-looking creatures in the windows.

“What happened to you?” That’s Pidge’s voice, you think. You haven’t really met her before this, she was just someone you saw when you went over to see Matt, which wasn’t very often. He came to yours, or you both went out. You don’t blame him for being overly protective of her; from what you’ve heard, Pidge is great at getting herself into trouble without any help from anyone. She’s also great at getting herself out of it, but that’s usually because what she’s doing is minorly illegal and she can’t get caught.

“Uh, I got killed by this purple dude, then I got killed again, but that was my other body, which came back to life with these sick new threads and then we came here.” Matt puts her down, but still has his hands on her shoulders. Wow, they look really similar. “How about you?” Pidge’s grin is lopsided, crinkling one eye more than the other.

“Oh, you know. Getting warped through space time feels a little weird so I’ve been in bed running code on this planet for the past couple of hours. Walked around a little bit before you brought us into your session. Broke into some places.” Exploded some places, if the various scorch marks are anything to go by. You can’t exactly look down on her though. You’d been in the game for 6.45 hours before you’d watched your boyfriend die and decided that going for revenge and also dying was the best course of action. You keep looking around and see some more multi-colored puffballs floating around. They seem to be glowing, a little bit.

Your group starts moving through the streets, with Pidge dragging a floating Matt along by his pseudo-cape. You float along after them, only paying half a mind to where you’re going. You haven’t really had the chance to look at a lot of the planets, what with the dying, and the running from a time splinter of your boyfriend made relevant, and killing your best friend. Wow, you’ve done a lot in the past 13.40 hours. Wow, it hasn’t been a full day and you already want to sleep for the next 10,000 years. You feel a strange chiming echo in your head, and you realize you should probably pester the past version of yourself and close that loop. You tell your past self to kill Matt, but we’ve already read that log, so we aren’t going to waste space and copy/paste it here. We’re better than that.

You shake your head a little bit. That train of thought was fucking weird. But you’re moving past it. What were you thinking about, again? No clue, but it probably wasn’t important. You float after the rest of the group until you reach your destination. Which is… a house? Maybe? It looks like it should be a house, but half of it is missing. The chiming in your head has stopped, but there’s a softer one still in the background. That’s the second time your future self Pestered you, so you’ll need to keep an ear out for when the chiming gets louder and you have to close that loop, but you still have at least an hour before that needs to be done. You zone back into what’s happening in front of you, because it’s probably at least a little important.

“Yeah, I can pack up a lot of my stuff and we can go find the others. If there’s really a bunhc of players out there killing everybody else, I’d rather be in a group than by myself.” Pidge is still talking, but you kind of stop listening. You are too distracted by the pictures around her room and the posters thumb-tacked to the wall. There are Area 51 posters, and blurry pictures of Bigfoot and Mothman. There are a few of her and two darker skinned boys, and you can only assume that those kids are Lance and Hunk, the people she entered with. There are a few scattered of her and Matt, her and her parents, her dog.

There’s one picture that catches you by surprise, because you aren’t sure when it was taken. You’re in it, with an arm slung around Matt’s shoulders, with Shiro’s arm around your own. Matt’s planting what you remember being a particularly wet kiss on your cheek, and Shiro’s hand is in your hair. The three of you had just been accepted into the Galaxy Garrison, Shiro to be an astronaut and you and Matt to be pilots for regular, Earth-bound aircraft. Shiro’d already had his pilot’s license, and the three of you had all applied to the same place out of a small hope, but no expectancies. The acceptance letter in your photographed hand matches the one that had been in Matt’s, which was only slightly different than the one Shiro had gotten earlier that day.

It hurts to remember plans you’d had on an Earth that doesn’t exist anymore, because it had been blown to hell when you’d all started entering the game. So many people, dead. Your stomach turns just thinking about it, so you start thinking about other things. Like how everyone is starting to leave Pidge’s room, trailing out the door and you follow, slipping your hand into Shiro’s as you pass him. He takes to the air with you, and you both float along after Pidge and Matt. There comes a point where Matt picks up his sister, who starts shriek-laughing, and you all take to the sky, flying through the Spirograph above her section of house.

Immediately, you all clap your hands to your ears, except for Matt, who is still holding Pidge. His grimace tells you that he wishes he had earbuds, though. You’re all on your planet, and you’d like to get off of it as soon as possible and not just because of the bells. You decidedly don’t look at the clouds, not wanting to see what incriminating shit everyone else is looking at. You use the hand still holding Shiro’s to fly you both toward the next portal. 

You wait for Pidge and Matt to catch up, because you’d rather not leave anyone on this planet without you being there with them. The memories that you’ve seen playing aren’t that bad, but it’s still too much of your past that’s on display to people you’d rather it not be on display for. Shiro knows about a lot of this shit, as does Matt, but you’ve talked to Pidge all of five times beyond normal pleasantries before the game started and she’s already seen your dad leaving, so you’d really like for her to not see more.

In the distance, you see the day Shiro “died”, when you destroyed a whole lot of your room before laying down in the wreckage crying, until Matt found you and got you through the worst of it. He’d helped you clean up once you’d gotten it vaguely together and had helped you throw out a lot of the broken things. The he’d stayed over and held you until you’d fallen asleep and helped you through it when you woke up the next day and realized it all hadn’t been one supremely fucked up nightmare. It hadn’t been a good time, and even though Shiro is alive, right next to you, you still hate thinking about the time when he wasn’t. You all slip through the portal and everything is a whole hell of a lot quieter on this side of the spirograph. 

The planet seems a lot like Matt’s, because most of it is ocean, but the water is so clear you can see right to the bottom almost everywhere. There are skyscrapers sticking up on steel stilts that have things crusted all on them, and you can see large shapes moving under the water, but you’re all too high up to see much clearly.

You hear Lance long before you see him, because he’s yelling and laughing at the top of his lungs. You spare a moment to wonder who the hell he’s talking to before you get closer to the water and realize that the large shapes you saw earlier are fucking mermaids, and that Lance is talking to them instead of thin air. Well, at least he’s friends with his consorts. The mermaids start pointing at your group, and you’re worried for .413 seconds before Lance looks over at you guys and starts waving.

“What’s up, Lance?” It’s Matt who calls out, his voice carrying over the ocean below, echoing back at you from the buildings. “Long time, no sea!” It might be a verbal conversation, but you can hear Matt misspelling the pun. Lance is laughing back, full bodied laughs that make all the mermaids around him laugh, too.

“Hey, Matt! Is that Pidge with you?” You and Shiro drift a little closer to the water when Matt and Pidge go join Lance on some of the lower steel scaffolding where he’s sitting. Shiro has never met Lance before and you’ve talked to him even less than you’ve talked to Pidge. You’ve always got the feeling that he never liked you all that much. It doesn’t matter to you, really, but you’d rather not fight with the guy who’s supposed to have your back. The water doesn’t look too deep, but you know in your head that that’s probably just because the water is basically crystal clear and you can see the bottom, and that it’s definitely deeper than it looks. That doesn’t make the whale sized mermaid that surfaces next to you any less surprising, because you’d thought that all mermaids were the same size. Oh, well. Not like it really matters, right?

“Hey guys, come on up here!” Matt is calling the two of you back to the group, so you and Shiro wave goodbye to the whale mermaid and join the rest of your little team on the beams. “Say hi!” Shiro smiles brightly at Lance and introduces himself. Lance’s eyes are wide, and you know a crush when you see one. You refuse to get jealous, no matter how much you want to. This is definitely just an infatuation, because who wouldn’t be mildly in love with Shiro? You can’t really blame him, but you are a little annoyed when Lance looks at where you and Shiro are still holding hands and looks you up and down like you aren’t good enough for Shiro. You lied, Lance can fuck off if he says anything shitty to you, about you, or about you and Shiro.

“I’m Keith, but we’ve talked on Pesterchum before. It’s good to meet you in person.” You try your best to be polite, because you will not be the one to fuck this up. Lance gives you one more up-and-down look filled with mild disgust and holds his hand out to shake. You go first, and Shiro lets go of your left hand briefly to shake hands with Lance using his right. Lance only hesitates for 2.31 seconds before shaking Shiro’s glowing hand. You might be upset that he hesitated at all, but he never stopped smiling, so you’ll let it slide. You do notice how he rubs his hand on his jeans once he lets go, though.

“So what now? I mean, we still need Hunk, and the other guy we came in with.” Lance is looking between the four of you like you have a better idea of what to do next, like your time here hasn’t been one shit show after another.

“We’ll need Allura, too.” Shiro’s voice is steady, even though Allura could be double dead by now for all you know. You shake yourself. You have to think more positively than that if you want everyone to survive. “We should probably split up into teams, to cover more ground faster. Keith and I will go check on Allura and make sure she’s safe.” Matt opens his mouth, probably to protest, but Shiro keeps going. “The rest of you should go find Hunk and your fourth player. Matt will stay with you because he’s Godtier and can use his powers to keep you safe. We’ll meet back up on Matt’s planet in an hour.” Matt squares his shoulders and snaps off a salute, before grabbing Pidge and Lance by the wrists and taking off towards the portal in the sky.

“We should get going.” The clocks in your head are spinning off, and chiming at odd intervals, so something must be coming up timewise that’s important. Shit, you have to tell yourself that it’s okay to kill Matt, because you can’t lose him. You went through the trauma of killing him, so you deserve to have him, and refuse to let a past version of you fuck that up. You send off some quick messages to yourself, and Shiro doesn’t try and distract you as you both fly towards Skaia, and Prospit with it. “Sorry, had to message a past me to do some stuff.” He shakes his head.

“All of that time stuff trips me up. How do you keep track of it all?” You aren’t sure you want to tell him about the chiming that just went silent in your head once you completed the loop, but you trust him to not judge you too much. Even as the explanation comes out of your mouth, you understand how crazy it sounds.

“So, yeah, when an important time thing is coming up, the bells in my head get louder, like one huge annoying alarm clock that I can’t shut off until I close the time loop. Sometimes it’s hard to remember what I said before, but I also say whatever comes naturally, which is also what I remember myself saying. It’s a weird free will vs. pre-determined destiny thing, but honestly I try not to think about it too much. I just follow the rules so we don’t all end up doomed.” Shiro is looking at you like he’s impressed, and you fight the blush that is quickly rising to your cheeks. “I don’t actually know what your powers are, but they seem cooler than mine. I mean, you made yourself a new arm.” Shiro looks at the glowing hand, flexing his fingers.

“I’m a hope player, or so I’ve been told. I don’t actually know what I do, either, just that if I believe in things hard enough, they usually become true. But only in certain cases.” He closes his hand into a fist. “I don’t really know how to explain it. It doesn’t work all the time, but my arm hasn’t failed me, yet.” You hum a little in understanding. You can relate. There are some things you try to do with your time bullshit, but they just don’t end up happening, so you guess they just aren’t in the scope of your powers. Nothing about this game makes sense, really.

Prospit is getting closer, and the two of you waste no time flying into Allura’s dream tower. She’s not there, but it doesn’t take long to find her once you look out of the window. She’s flying along the streets, talking to some of the carapacians as she passes them. She flies up, closing in on her tower where you are, and you pull back from the window to let her in. She doesn’t stop moving until she bowls Shiro over in a hug, if her squealing is anything to go by.

“Shiro! It is so good to see you in person!” It comes as a shock to you that they’ve never met before. But if Shiro had no way of leaving his land, much less travelling to Allura’s planet, it makes sense. Your heart hurts as you look at the two of them wrapped up in each other. They might have been in the game together, but they were entirely alone the whole time. Allura disentangles herself from your boyfriend and you school your face into what you hope looks like a smile just in time for her to hug you, too. “I’m not quite sure who you are, but I’m happy to see you as well!” That startles a laugh out of you; you hadn’t expected her to be quite that honest. Shiro is laughing, too, and that makes your smile stretch wider.

“I’m Keith. It’s nice to meet you.” Allura’s eyes widen as her mouth drops open in a little ‘o’. You aren’t sure why.

“The Keith?” She looks back at Shiro. “Why, Shiro’s told me so much about you! It’s so nice to finally be able to put a face to a name, even if the circumstances are less than ideal.” Shiro lets out a groan behind her and when you look, he’s bright red.

“Allura, maybe calm down a little bit? And share less detail about what we talked about over the last year, maybe?” He’s running a hand across his face in embarrassment, just like he did before he left, and you love seeing little snatches of your boyfriend pre-game in this version of Shiro. You immediately feel bad for thinking it. Shiro has always been Shiro, game or no game. Allura is still looking at you expectantly.

“Yeah, I’m that Keith.” You don’t know what else to say, but that must be good enough for Allura, because she throws her arms around you, spinning the both of you a little bit with her floating powers. You don’t remember the last time you were hugged by a virtual stranger, but you don’t think you enjoyed it as much as this one. Allura hugs with her whole body, squeezing you with a strength it doesn’t look like she should have. You hug her back, and it lasts a little longer than you think hugs between strangers should, but hey, you might all potentially die together, so maybe you aren’t as strange to each other as you could be. That said, you are still relieved when you break apart.

“So, I see you two have been busy. I’ll assume that you were killed by the person who killed me?” Shiro straightens up, like he’s about to give a report.

“Zarkon, we’re sure of it. He’s going around Godtier-ing us, and we aren’t sure why. The people from the new session seem to think he’s trying to hijack ours.” Shiro’s shoulders slouch just the tiniest bit. “We don’t know how to stop him.” Allura turns away from you, searching along her bookshelf.

“I know I had it here…” She seems to be talking to herself, and you decide to let her be. Whatever she’s looking for, it must be important for her to not be at least a little shocked by the news that you’re all slowly being killed. “Aha!” She pulls a tome from the shelf, and it’s deep purple cover has glowing markings etched into the surface. “A man called Kolivan gave me this. He types in all white, it’s rather frustrating sometimes.” She looks up from where she’s flipping through the pages of the book. “Have either of you talked to him, yet?” You shake your head and see Shiro do the same out of the corner of your eye. At least you aren’t too far out of the loop, if even Shiro doesn’t know who she’s talking about. “Oh, well, I’m sure you will soon. But he told me these things, and when I woke up – which I should thank you for, Shiro, because I’d barely known I’d died – this was sitting on the shelf where it most certainly hadn’t been before.” She keeps flipping through the book, obviously searching for something.

“Are you sure you can trust this guy, Allura?” Shiro gives voice to your concern before you have the chance to. It’s not that you don’t trust people you’ve never met before, it’s just that you don’t. “I mean, a book appearing out of thin air seems a little sketchy to me, you know?” Allura shrugs.

“He hasn’t given me any chance not to trust him, and he’s not the one who killed me, so he can’t be that bad.” Allura flips another page, before exclaiming once more. “I’ve found it! It’s this ultimate weapon thing called Voltron. Well, really, it’s called a juju, but this juju in particular, when used, becomes this thing called Voltron.” Allura turns the book toward you, and you see a human-ish form that seems to be cut into five separate sections. The figure is a pure white, though there is another drawing of it in the bottom corner of the page which has it lit up in color. It looks familiar, but for the life of you, you don’t know why.

“So what’s a juju?” That seems like a reasonably question to ask, you think, but Allura’s light chuckle makes you second guess yourself.

“Oh, I’ve no idea what a juju is, other than some sort of magical object.” Allura flips through a couple of pages, and you see a bright green and red swirled lollipop on a page. “There are a bunch of them, apparently, but this one is the one we should worry about.” She returns to the page with the house and looks over some of the writing. “I don’t actually know where it is, though. Kolivan said we’d find it, but I’m not quite sure how.” You don’t know how to reply to that, so you don’t. You look back out the window over the golden city. It’s pleasant here, with Skaia drifting along overhead. But something is new, you think.

“Hey, have those two other towers always been here?” You don’t remember Prospit having four dreaming spires the last time you were here, but to be fair, that was just once, and you weren’t paying as much attention as you could have been. But something in your chest feels like it’s slightly out of sync with the clock of the universe when you look at them. Like you pulled them from a different timeline.

“No, those are new. I think.” Allura comes beside you to rest her hands on the window sill. “There’s something off about them, isn’t there?” She looks back at you, and you don’t know what sort of differences she’s seeing, but you think it’s similar to the ones you see. Other-you said she was a space player, right? Maybe she can tell they’re from a different place. You can hear the pages of the book still turning behind you, so Shiro must still be searching. And you’d love to stay and chat, really, but you did all set a time limit, and you can feel that clock counting down in the back of your head.

“We’re running out of time to meet up with the others. We need to get going.” Now that you’ve noticed the ticking countdown, it’s all you can focus on. It’s like a loop clock, a constant reminder that there’s something you need to do in 26.54 minutes that is important to the integrity of the alpha timeline. You give a moment’s pause as Shiro and Allura grab some stuff to put in a bag to wonder if the others have something like this, too, or if you’re the only one who has alarm bells going off in their head almost all the time. You kind of hope you are, because it sucks, and you wouldn’t wish it on anybody.

“Okay, Keith, Allura, let’s move.” Shiro lays a hand gently on your shoulder and you appreciate the touch for a moment before you climb onto the window sill and jump.

You don’t fall like you did the first time, 2 hours and 57 minutes ago. You’ve had a lot of practice since then, with the flying and the levitating and the generally being in control of your movements thing. You are the master of not falling, it is you. Allura is giggling somewhere behind you, and Shiro’s laughter also carries on the breeze. You turn so your back is facing the ground and look back at the two of them. Allura is spinning corkscrews around Shiro’s straighter flight path, and she closes in on him every so often to poke at his shoulder, at his side, and the scar that crosses his nose. You’re happy that it seems that she can’t really remember her death in any great detail, because that’s another thing you wouldn’t wish on anyone. The feeling of all your blood leaving your body isn’t something you’d like to relive anytime soon.

Your group is closing in on Matt’s planet, and the shooting stars are fun to dodge as you enter atmosphere. Allura almost gets singed once and she lets out a shrieking laugh that gets you to chuckle, too. It’s easy to forget, sometimes, that this game destroyed your universe, and that these people are all you have, the strangers that most of them are. The powers are still something to adjust to, but you are hard pressed to remember what it was like to have silence in your head, as opposed to the constant ticking in your soul. Your heart keeps perfect metronome time, and Shiro is missing an arm, and has too many scars that you haven’t seen, and you met Allura .46 hours ago, because you aren’t counting that creepy couple of minutes that you watched her slept. It’s been a long day, and you have a feeling it’s only about to get longer.

You close in on the largest ship you can see, only to find that you three are the first ones here. The chiming in your head is getting louder, which is strange because there’s no loops left for you to close. The three of you land on the boat, and the moment your feet touch the planks you are speared through the middle by a lance that sticks in the deck in front of you, holding you upright, even as you gasp for air. You can see red pooling at your feet, and can feel the cold onset of blackness coming up to meet you. Shiro is screaming, and so is Allura, but they sound so far away. You lift your head just in time to see yourself, pushing Allura out of the way of another spear. The you who has blood all over his clothes (but it’s a little hard to tell because everything he’s wearing is already red) picks that spear up from out of the ship and throws it back into the sky. As your head becomes too heavy to keep lifted, you hear something hit the water with a splash. You die, with bells screaming in your head, and it sucks even more than it did the first time.

Keith: Be The Other Keith

You don’t know what bullshit just ran through your head, but you’ve always been you. You straighten up just in time to see the past version of yourself die. You remember being that version of you, so you know that you’ll have to wait a moment. That stabbing in the back was neither just, nor heroic, so it’s only a matter of time before that poor bastard gets brought back to life, anyway. You turn your attention to Shiro, who is still sobbing over your dead body. You should let him mourn, but you’re also standing right here, mostly unharmed. The dried blood is slowly flaking out of your clothes, to leave the soft red time stamped jammies behind. You set a gentle hand on Shiro’s shoulder, pulling him away from the past-you and you direct him to help Allura, who is still in shock on the floor. You can see the body of whoever the hell you just killed floating in the distance, so you’ll need to check that out, soon. But you didn’t see Godtier clothes on them, so they shouldn’t be coming back.

You pull the spear from your counterpart’s body and he falls to the floor with a squishy thump. Gross. You leave him to be resurrected, flying out over the ocean to where the wooden lance is still bobbing with the waves. Wow, this person attached to the spear looks weird. Their skin is pinkish, with a strange, almost ponytail like protrusion coming from the top of their head. They’re wearing some kind of armor, and you should probably bring their body back to the ship. If there’s one thing this fucking game has taught you, it’s don’t turn your back on the body.

They’re heavier than they look, but it isn’t too far from the ship that you can’t manage them. You deposit them onto the deck of the ship just as your past body begins to glow. There are bells in the back of your head, but nothing as loud as before you got killed. You wonder if impending-death bells are louder, or if it’s just louder because you’re the one sending yourself back through time. You shrug to yourself. It doesn’t really matter, you think. You watch him come back to life, and you go to talk to him, because he’s gotta be warned.

“Okay, I’m going to send you back, now. You have to, under all circumstances, keep Allura safe.” He opens his mouth but you cut him off. “No time for questions. You have someone to kill and people to protect, and so do I. Bye.” You punctuate your farewell with a tap on his forehead, and he vanishes through the time stream. Nothing goes immediately wrong, and the bell in your head is gone. Finally. You roll your neck before turning back to Shiro and Allura.

“Keith? But… what?” Poor Shiro, he looks so confused, but it’s not like you really have answers for him. Time barely makes sense to you, and it’s your aspect. It’s not like you know jack about his hope-y stuff, and you don’t think you ever could. You shrug one shoulder again, and you reach up to take off your face mask that rematerialized on your face when you came back to life.

“Time loop, you know? Gotta make sure everyone’s in their place.” Shiro shakes his head, like he doesn’t get it, but that’s okay. You’re getting the hang of it more and more. You nudge the weird alien person with your foot. Allura staggers her way over to you, using the railing of the ship to help her keep upright.

“She’s a troll.” Allura kind of falls, kind of lowers herself to brush a hand against the alien’s face. “She talked to me on Trollian a few times.” She brushes her hands off on her skirt and makes to stand. You help her when it seems like she’s about to fall again. “It’s a shame that she wasn’t really as nice as she seemed.” Allura turns her back on the body, and you know you have to get rid of it, somehow. Can’t have things happening and this alien getting brought back to life. God knows what her classpect is, or the damage it could do. You should Pester Matt and find out where the hell they are.

brainlessBeauty [BB] began pestering brassKnuckles [BK] at 17:04! 

BK: hey where are you guys  


BB is an idle chum!

BK: god damn it Matt get it together  
BK: where are you  
BB: hey sry K kinda in the middle of somethin  
BB: some ppl rnt so nice here  
BB: uh can u back us up actually  
BB: we r by my house  
BK: fuck okay  
BK: well be right there  
BB: ur a lifesaver K  


BB’s phone exploded!

BK: well shit  


“Okay, kids, we gotta go. Matt’s under attack by his house, probably like what happened here.” Shiro’s by your side in an instant, and Allura isn’t far behind.

“Let’s go.” Shiro takes off in the direction of Matt’s house, and you wave Allura to go next. She’s still soft and killable, so you’d rather have your eye on her at all times. You’re at Matt’s house soon enough, and Shiro is a streak of pale gold cutting through purple bodies. Matt is on the ground, bleeding out, and Pidge is next to him, hands fluttering around the hole in his midsection. Gross. There are no bells going through your head, so that’s not your problem to deal with right now. Besides, if you aren’t going to be doing something (will have done something? Tenses still trip you up) then he must just come back to life once he finally bleeds out. It sucks, but that’s just how it goes, sometimes.

A large purple body falls to the ground next to you, and you focus in on where Shiro is still going head on against another huge alien. He’s got a weird arm thing going on, too. What is it with this game and fucking people over in the extremity department? You leave Shiro to it, making sure to keep an ear out for if he needs help and turn an eye to the time stream. It still chimes alpha-true, so you leave it alone. Crossing to the fallen purple alien, you see they’re still alive. Can’t have that. You stab them in where they’re heart would be if they were human. They stop moving when you pull your knife out, so you suppose they aren’t so different from you after all. 2/? purple aliens killed. They aren’t wearing anything special, just more armor like the last alien you killed. No Godtier bullshit to worry about, then. Thank God.

In a rookie move you turn your back on the body to check on Allura, who’s fine, if covered in Matt’s blood sitting next to a crying Pidge. You suppose that she must not know that he’s coming back. You can’t hear the tick-tocking of the judgement clock, which means he’s died neither deservedly or heroically. You turn back to the purple corpse when Matt starts to glow and it’s still there. Phew. You put your head into your hand in relief, and that’s when it happens. The cold crawls over your skin and Pidge cries out, clutching at her head. Fuck, you don’t have time for this.

Coming back to the moment, the body is gone, replaced with a living alien of different stature in front of you. This one has no eyes, which is unsettling to say the least. There’s something that kind of looks like a cat on their shoulder, but it doesn’t look like any cat you’re used to, so it might not be. Either way, you jerk the fuck back from the weird eyeless alien. The cold is still digging its talons into your bones, and you glance over at Allura, who is trying to help Pidge, who is trying to stop Matt from fighting the weird-half-armless guy with Shiro. Guess you’re on weird cat alien duty.

The alien takes a swing at you, and you’re slow to respond, because of that damn sluggish cold. You can’t see the source of it anywhere, even though the witch and her partner must be around somewhere. For that matter, where the fuck are Hunk and Lance? You swear, they better not be off getting killed. At the next swing of the alien’s dagger you aren’t fast enough to dodge, and you get sliced along your shoulder. Bells start chiming faintly in your head, several starting in the next few milliseconds, and Lance appears behind the alien cat and cuts it in half. The humanoid alien goes down shrieking from a mouth it doesn’t have. Hunk is in the sky somewhere, and he’s glowing green, and in a beige tunic and leggings. His hood looks pretty damn cool. You look back to Lance to see that he’s gone Godtier, too. Well, at least they’re here, and with whatever Hunk is doing, he’s bringing some warmth back to your body. Sweet.

Lance is wearing dark pink, and what looks to be more sort of a dress, but he’s also got a sick hood and pretty bangles that clink together on his wrists. His hood isn’t up, but the long strings trailing from it look cool when he flies up to wear Hunk is. You take care of the alien who is still mouthlessly screaming on the ground in front of you. 3/? purple aliens killed. You look up to see if you have to change the body count when you see Pidge push Matt out of the way, getting gored through the middle. No, this isn’t happening, no no nononono. You look to Allura, to make sure she’s still safe, only to see Pidge beside her, jaw dropped, staring at her Godtiered double in the sky.

She plummets from the sky, and you fly up to catch her. You did this to her, you can feel it; she’s displaced out of time, you’re the reason she’s dead. She puts a hand on your cheek, and when she smiles her teeth are stained with blood.

“We were doomed, anyway. You sent me back to fix it.” Her hand falls from your face, and her gaze turns to the sky. To her brother. “Thank you, Keith.” Her eyes go all unfocused, and you clutch at her a little tighter. This is all your fault, and you wish you knew how to fix it. The bells in your head remain at the same number however, so maybe this isn’t yours to fix. If Matt dying doomed you all, and Pidge just un-doomed the timeline by saving him, then maybe the you that sent her back in the first place isn’t you you. You let your focus drift to the plane of sight and understanding that lets you manipulate other timelines, and feel how they connect and diverge and intersect at pivotal moments. You look into the Pidge in your arms and see the moment she split from your timeline, see how, ultimately, you were the only two left in your session. You see the end of that timeline’s Keith and you feel sorry for that poor bastard, left all alone in a way you know would destroy you. He doesn’t deserve that fate.

You focus yourself back into your timeline, your time. Okay, so the Pidge in your arms is from a different timeline, but that still means she dies, because the judgement clock has decided that that was definitely heroic, so this Pidge is staying dead. You take a moment to look at the bits of her pajamas not covered in blood. Her hood is down, and her outfit actually looks pretty similar to yours, but only really bright green and without the cool gloves or mask. You close your eyes for a moment, just to block out the sight of her. You’ll have to face things eventually, though, and it’s probably better to do that sooner than later, so you open your eyes again and place Pidge’s body gently on the ground. You hurry over to where Allura and your timeline’s Pidge still are, and you pull them both to their feet. Lance is there, too, but Hunk is still in his weird green meditative state in the sky. At the edge of the atmosphere, you see a deep purple dress and you give Lance a quick order to keep the other’s safe before you’re off after it like a shot.

The further you get from Hunk, the closer you get to the witch, and the colder you feel. It must have something to do with their aspects. Maybe they’re opposites? Whatever it is, it makes it hard to concentrate. The anger starts clouding your vision and your mind becomes oddly tunneled onto revenge. She’s fucking with your head, she must be, because you weren’t like this a moment ago. You stop flying towards her, and as she gets further away your mind clears up.

Your mind clears up just enough to realize that the Shiro flying toward you is not your Shiro, not the Shiro of your timeline, but the one you stole, the one that moonlightAscending twisted into some fucked up version of Shiro. His arm comes up a sickening purple and your knife barely drops out of your strife deck fast enough to block it. Fuck, you felt that one all the way up to your shoulders. Clone-Shiro isn’t stopping with the assault, which means you can’t slack on the defense, even though there are vaguely concerning noises behind you. Namely, Matt screaming. But you can’t look, because clone-Shiro almost just took off your head, and you fly up and closer to leaving the planet, where the comets are streaking through the sky. If you get hit and killed by one, it shouldn’t be a perma-death, but clone-Shiro isn’t Godtier like you are. Shit, can he even go Godtier? There’s no way he’s the same classpect as Shiro- MA did say some weird shit about rage. Who knows. Not you, and you certainly don’t have the spare time to think about it right now.

“Keith, duck!” You heed the warning before you really know who the hell is shouting, dropping twenty feet in space so quickly you have to dodge a meteor you weren’t expecting. You hear the gunshot before you see clone-Shiro jerk where he floats. You feel it when his blood splatters onto your face though. At least none landed in your mouth or your eyes. Small blessings.

Clone-Shiro floats there for a moment, eyes wide and almost scared looking before he starts to fall. He goes right past you before your body catches up to what your eyes are seeing. He’s still Shiro, somewhere in there, and you can’t let him die alone. You won’t let any Shiro be alone, not again. You go after him, and catch him about forty feet down. His breathing is erratic. He doesn’t have very long.

“Keith?” He sounds just like your Shiro, but terrified, like dying isn’t ever something he thought of. “Keith, you gotta believe me, I didn’t want to hurt you.” He’s clutching at the collar of your hood, now, the usually glowing arm a duller purple. “I didn’t want to, but she did something to me, Keith, something that I couldn’t fight because it hurt so bad.” He ducks his head to hide near his hands, and you can’t do anything but hold him, because he’s so scared and your heart is breaking for him.

“Keith, wait.” It’s Hunk, coming up behind you. He rests a hand on Shiro’s shoulder, who shrinks under the touch.

“We can save him.” Lance lays his own hand on Hunk’s shoulder, and the green bracelets fall down his forearm. He pulls his hood down and ducks his head to look at clone-Shiro. “We can save you. But you have to let us.” Lance holds his hand out, and waits 6.12 seconds before clone-Shiro takes it. Lance takes a deep breath. You don’t know what happens, exactly, but you feel something shift. Kind of like there was a gear slightly out of place that is now synced up with the rest of machinery. Clone-Shiro lets out a small breath in your arms, and it’s nice, whatever Lance did, but he’s still dying.

“I got you, buddy.” Hunk inclines his head, and holds out his arms. You take it to mean you’re supposed to hand clone-Shiro over. You do. Hunk glows green, and the glow spreads to clone-Shiro who is not bleeding anymore, and back to his normal color. He opens his eyes, and they focus on you almost instantly.

“Keith?” He reaches out a hand, but you are all startled by alpha-alpha Shiro.

“Keith! Could use a hand!” You give Hunk, Lance, and clone-Shiro a little wave as you turn and fly toward your Shiro and Matt, who are still fighting the same guy as earlier. They all look pretty messed up. Shiro’s arm seems to be glitching, somehow, and the purple asshole is smiling so wide you can count his fangs. You’re pretty sure you know what Shiro is asking you to do.

Stealing time from this guy is easy, but it’s harder to split is equally between Matt and Shiro. So you take some time from yourself, so you and the alien are both stuck in time for 46.52 seconds. The second you take the time from your own self, the clock hand in your chest becomes so painful you feel like you might puke, and you think you would, if you weren’t currently frozen, and were going to be for another 38.26 seconds. You feel like the clock-beat of your heart stopped, which you know isn’t true, but your body is revolting against the feeling of being outside time. Which, you suppose, makes sense. You are a time player after all.

It feels as though an iron band has wrapped itself around your skull, and it’s getting smaller with each nonexistent second that doesn’t tick by. The bells in your head have gone silent, but are at the same time louder than ever, bouncing around in your brain. It’s a blessing and a curse when time finally affects you again, because you really do puke, and you think that’s probably blood in there, falling towards the ocean, which can’t be good. There’s some kind of warm liquid streaming from your eyes and your ears, and when you lift your hand to check, it’s blood, red and fresh. Wow, okay, never doing that again, ever. You blink the blood from your lashes, but just succeed in kind of smearing it over the lens of your eye. Now everything is slightly pinkish.

“Hey, Keith, stay still.” It’s Hunk’s voice, and his face soon enters your magenta field of vision, and, wow, does he look funny through a rose-colored filter. His hands come up to hold your face, and you close your eyes against the swirling colors you can see. Bluh. Hunk lets go of your face and you open your eyes. Everything is blessedly clear again. Okay, so no more removing time from yourself ever again, unless you want to bleed from your eyes and ears until your brain liquefies and you die. Good to know, if a terrible way to find out.

“Well, that sucked.” It breaks the tension of Hunk’s worried face still being six inches away from yours, and Lance hovering over his shoulder. You all bust out laughing, probably mostly out of relief now that all the bad guys in the immediate vicinity are dead. Shiro’s not-flesh arm comes around you and you lean into his chest, the yellow glowing of his arm warming your neck. You let yourself rest for a moment, but the bells ever-present in your head remind you that you have things to do. People to kill, if how they started ringing right when the Godtiered Hunk and Lance showed up. But the chiming is still soft, so you’ve got a while before anything really goes down.

You all drift down to where Allura and Pidge are still grounded, and Matt throws his arms around Pidge and squeezes her so tightly you can hear the air escape from her like a balloon. Her face starts turning red and she hits Matt on the shoulder until he lets go of her.

“I swear, if you ever die on me again, ever, I will find an alive version of you and crush you to death in the worst hug you’ve ever received.” Matt sounds deadly serious, but it’s ruined by Pidge squinting her eyes up at him and laughing.

“What the fuck did you just say?” She looks around at the rest of you. “Did that make sense to anyone? Or was he just saying words?” There’s a smile threatening the corners of Matt’s serious eyes, when Hunk just shrugs.

“I don’t know, dude, but those sure were sounds he made.”

“Yeah,” Lance throws an arm around Hunk’s shoulders, “his voice box did the vibration thing for a while.” They keep going in a similar vein for a few more minutes, Matt becoming increasingly more flustered, but you’ve stopped really paying attention. You turn to Shiro and Allura, who are both watch clone-Shiro. Well, there’s something to deal with that isn’t whatever the fuck the others are doing.

You walk over to the clone of your boyfriend, and crouch down to meet his eye where he’s sitting on the floor. He looks up at you, and it seems like he wants to smile, but his eyes slide past you and over your shoulder to look at something there. You follow his gaze to see Shiro looking at the pair of you. He seems very unhappy. You pat clone-Shiro’s calf before you get back up and walk to Shiro.

“You need to stop looking like you’re going to kill him.” Shiro immediately stops glaring at where his clone is back to staring at the ground. He lets out a huff and turns away from him completely. You take a step closer to him and rest your palm against Shiro’s cheek. “Hunk and Lance did their funky thing, he’s not a bad guy anymore. You know that.” Shiro closes his eyes and lets his shoulders droop forward until he’s slightly hunched over you. You bring your arms around him, coaxing him to rest his head on your shoulder, like you know he wants to do. He does.

“I know, I know. It’s just, the way he looked at you.” You can feel Shiro turn his head so his nose is pressed slightly against your neck. “He’s in love with you, and I’m handling that really badly.” You let out a small chuckle at his confession.

“I don’t know, if a different version of me strolled in here and started acting all in love with you, I’d get pretty pissed, too.” Shiro sighs against you, and you take a little more of his weight. You forgot how much you missed holding him like this. And the way that you can turn your head just a bit and kiss right behind his ear. He holds you closer.

“I’ll try to be better about it, I promise.” When he blinks, you can feel his eyelashes brushing your skin. It tickles. “But we need something to call him. Something that doesn’t sound anything like my name, preferably.” You lay another kiss on him before shifting enough that he gets the message to take a step back from you.

“Let’s go talk to him about it, then.” You take Shiro by the hand and lead him to the time clone you had a hand in creating. You should try to not do it again. “Hey.” Clone-Shiro looks up at you both, before his gaze falls to where Shiro’s hand is tightening around yours. Your boyfriend needs to take a deep breath and calm down. “What’s your name?”

“They called me Kuron.” He sounds sad, his voice flat and empty. “I don’t want to be called that anymore.” Shiro is the first of you to move at the confession. He sits next to his double with a sigh.

“How do you feel about being called Ryou?” You take in a sharp breath. “I almost had a little brother with that name, but…” You remember this, from years ago. Shiro’s mother had been in an accident while she was pregnant. She made it. Ryou, not so much. Shiro had been despondent for weeks, only making sure he was functioning well enough to take care of his mother. “But I think, if you’re coming with us, you should have a name that you want. So, what do you think?” Here is the man you fell in love with, open and caring to the core. You hope that, in time, they really do become like brothers.

“I think I like it. If that’s okay with you.” He still looks so small where he sits, and he flinches when Shiro rests an arm around his shoulders. Sitting together like this, you can see more differences between them than you originally thought.

“Yeah, it’s okay. So what do you say? Ryou?” Shiro’s smile is gentle, and the grin he gets in return is no less so.

“Ryou.” It’s a touching moment, one you feel bad for having to interrupt. You clear your throat so they have some kind of warning before you go barging in.

“So, figured it out?” Ryou holds out his hand and you take it, helping him to his feet. Ryou, in turn, holds his purple arm out to Shiro, who takes it with his own golden one. You wonder about the differences of them, how Ryou’s classpect was twisted when he got turned into an alpha version of an already existing player. But that’s a problem to deal with another time, preferably when the bells in your head are not getting steadily louder, telling you that you’ve got loops to close. You turn to Lance and Hunk, who are still talking to Pidge and Matt. “Hey, you two,” you call, gesturing to the two newly-Godtiered. “How’d that happen?”

“Well, we did it, actually.” You don’t know how to take that. They just killed themselves? Just like that, with no input from anyone else? What the fuck? “Yeah these versions of us in these clothes came up to us, explained the whole thing, and then killed us. You were there, too, and so was Allura. You’re the one who zapped us back through time. That feels super weird, by the way.” You let out a long breath. Okay, so it’s less extreme than you thought it was, but still. And that’s a time loop you have to resolve, so they have to go now and kill their current/past selves. You get why looking at the two of them makes you feel like a disc is skipping, though. They’re displaced in time and part of an incomplete loop.

“We should go sort that out, then. There’s not a lot of time let before that’s all supposed to happen.” Shiro gives you a concerned look, but you don’t have time to get emotional when you’re about to watch these two people die in front of you. “Do you remember where you were when we all found you guys?” Hunk looks thoughtful for a moment, but Pidge is the one to speak.

“They were by Coran’s planet, when you and Allura teleported them to Hunk’s planet.” Her voice is very matter-of-fact, but when you turn to face her, she looks startled. “I don’t know that. How did I know that?” Hunk looks just as taken aback as Pidge does, so he’s got no answers for her. You think you have an idea, though.

“It’s probably your game powers kicking in. This seems like the kind of planet that’s building you up to stealing information from very secure places. Mind reading must be something you can do.” Pidge shakes her head.

“But it wasn’t like I was trying to do it, it kind of just happened! Like it was my memory, not Hunk’s!” You shrug. You still aren’t sure how the game powers work, and you tell her so.

“I’m sure it’s no big deal, but if it happens again, try and learn how you can control it.” You turn to Allura, who has been mostly hanging back during all this commotion. “Allura?” You hold a hand out to her, but Shiro gets to it first.

“Where are we meeting, once you guys go? We obviously aren’t safe here, or on Matt’s planet. You give it a moment’s thought, but there’s only so many places left you can all go. Besides, your party is still short one member, who may or may not still be alive.

“Meet up on Coran’s land. It’s the only one we haven’t been to yet, so maybe they haven’t been there, either.” Shiro gives you a doubtful look, so you kiss his knuckles where they are still wrapped around your hand. “It’s the best we’ve got, Takashi.” His eyes soften at his name, and he gives you a kiss before you hold your hand back out ot Allura. “We’ll see you there. Don’t be late.” You let out a laugh.

“Me, late? Never.” Allura’s powers swallow you up before Shiro can do so much as process your reply.

It’s strange, travelling through space. You do get why it’s the opposite aspect to time, though. Time comes second nature to you, but it’s a finicky thing, filled with fits and starts. Space is nothing like that. In the moment between breaths, you travel halfway around the system, and you catch a glimpse of a planet covered in sand before you breathe out and your next breath in tastes like the ocean. You open your eyes (when did you close them?) to see the sun shine off the sea of Lance’s world, with Lance and Hunk right in front of you. They’re still wearing the clothes they entered the game in, with jetpacks on their backs. You take a moment (1.32 seconds) to feel absolutely terrible about how they’re about to die so you can resolve this time loop, but you shake it off. Such is the curse of a time player, and you wouldn’t wish it on anybody else.

“Allura? Keith? What are you guys doing here? What are we doing here? We were going to find Coran!” Present-Lance’s stream of questions doesn’t stop, but you talk over him.

“Look, I’m really, really, really sorry about this, but…” Fuck, how do you even say this? There’s no easy way to tell people you only kind of sort of know that you have to kill them so they can get weird powers that are honestly not worth dying for so they can go save the rest of your group. Future-Lance saves your hide.

“Look, can I talk to you? This is one of those things where it should just be you and me.” Present-Lance’s eyes get huge when he sees himself decked out in the Godtier jammies. They do look pretty cool, you have to admit. Present-Hunk is already in a conversation with his future self, but you can’t hear what they’re saying. You take the opportunity to talk to Allura.

“Hey, how are you doing? A lot has been happening really quickly, and you did get killed.” Allura lets out a soft laugh that has almost no actual humor in it.

“You know, so many other things have happened that I almost forgot about that. Strange, isn’t it, how you can forget your own death?” She pins you with a stare so piercing you wonder if she’s not the one with time powers, seeing how you were killed the first time. You get her point, though. You could’ve forgotten that happened, too. “But, other than that, I am well. As well as I can be, with people trying to kill us.” Her shoulders droop a little bit, but she shakes herself out of it before you can offer any kind of comfort.

“Hey guys?” It’s Hunk, with his current self in tow. “We’re gonna need a lift to my land.” He wiggles his fingers at Allura. “Can you do your spacey thing?” Allura smiles kindly.

“I think it’s a little bit more than a ‘thing’, Hunk, but yes, I can take you there.” She turns to you. “Would you like to come, Keith?” You consider it, but shake your head.

“I think I’ll wait for Lance to finish up, and then I’ll ask you to do the spacey thing.” You’re smiling, and Allura takes it as the lighthearted goodbye it is.

“Very well. Hunk?” She holds her hand out and the three of them disappear in a flash of green. You blink their afterimage out of your eyes and go to find Lance. You don’t want to rush him, because killing and dying are things not to be taken lightly, but you are on a schedule here. You float up and up and up, searching for the tallest spire you can see. It isn’t easy, because half of Lance’s land has skyscrapers sticking up out of the surf, and you aren’t sure if his consorts can talk, even though they seem human enough. You don’t want to chance them getting a little too excited and drowning you, anyway. You just mistake another skyscraper for the quest bed pillar when some douche bag trolls you.

airApparent [AA] began trolling brassKnuckles [BK] at 17:39!

AA: You Killed My Generals.  
AA: Prepare To Die.  
BK: ok Inigo whatever tf you say  
BK: wait i thought i blocked you  
AA: As If A Mere Human Like Yourself Could Stop Me  
BK: listen buster i dont have the time for this  
BK: ha time  
AA: Your Human Humor Is Lost On Me  
AA: Just Like The Rest Of Your Inadequate Race  
AA: But I Bear A Message  
BK: you dont strike me as a bear if you catch my drift  
AA: I Do Not Understand Your Petty Human “Drifts”  
AA: The Message Is Such  
AA: Tell Your Hero Of Mind And Your Hero Of Void That We Have Their Lusus  
BK: bro what the fucks a lusus  
AA: Well If That Is Not The Saddest Thing I Did Ever See Typed With My Own Eyes  
BK: ok cut the bullshit  
BK: what are you going on about  
AA: I Have Been Informed By An Associate That You Refer To Your Lusii As “Parents”  
AA: This Lusus Appears To Be Of The “Father” Variety  
BK: you have Pidge and Matts dad  
BK: well rip you buddy youre gonna fucking die  
BK: id give you a nice funeral  
BK: but you seem like an asshole  
BK: so i wont  
AA: I Am A Prince  
AA: What Hope Do You Have Of Defeating Me  
BK: oh buddy were gonna make you eat your words  
BK: and also probably your tongue  
BK: cant wait to meet you in person  
BK: so i can make fun of your shitty fake british accent  
BK: peace out fuckboi  
AA: This Is An Outrage  
AA: You Cannot Speak To Me In This Manner  
BK: i aint speaking bro  
BK: im typing  
BK: Keith out  


brassKnuckles [BK] ceased pestering airApparent [AA] at 17:56!

God, what an asshole. Bluh, you hate the guy and you haven’t even met him. Whatever, you have other things you need to be doing. Namely, finding Lance, both present and future versions. You circle around a few more skyscrapers before you find the quest bed tower. It has waterfalls spouting from it at intermittent places, creating a white noise that prevents you from hearing the conversation that Lance is having with himself. You do, however, hear the scream. Oh, you should look away, this is a private moment. You should pester Allura, instead. Yeah, you’re gonna do that.

brassKnuckles [BK] began pestering kingdomKeeper [KK] at 18:07! 

BK: hey Allura you almost ready for extraction  
KK: Yes, Hunk has just been resurrected by the bed, we just need you to send him back.  
KK: Has Lance returned?  
BK: uhh yeah he just came back  
BK: we are all ready to be zapped  
BK: beam us up scotty  
KK: I’m not going to pretend I know what that means  
KK: But get ready  


kingdomKeeper [KK] ceased pestering brassKnuckles [BK] at 18:13!

Travelling through space doesn’t suck in the way that stopping yourself in time did. Putting yourself in a place where time didn’t exist tore your body apart from the inside out, melted your brain down to mush and made your heart stop beating. Travelling through space doesn’t hurt, not at all, but when you try to orient yourself you are aggressively reminded that a body likes having gravity act upon it, and floating suddenly gives you vertigo in a way is hasn’t before. You let yourself drop to the nearest surface and put your head between your knees. You focus on your breathing, and vaguely hear the others talking in the background. Come on, Keith, breathe. You’ve been doing it your whole life. The next couple breaths come easier as you count the seconds with an annoying amount of precision.

You get yourself under control after 2.16 minutes and you get up to join the others. The bells have gotten loud enough that you can no longer ignore them. That reminds you, you should get back to your planet and finish those quests. They must be important for something. All that aside, you get ready to send Hunk and Lance back through time to when they helped you in the battle.

“So that’s what you need to do. Got it?” Lance has just finished talking to his past self, who is nodding with wide eyes. Hunk turns to you and gives you a thumbs up.

“Ready when you are, Keith!” Hunk’s smile is not mirrored by the one you are about to send straight into a fight, but he seems ready enough.

“Okay. Take a deep breath, you two.” You steal the time from between them and the moment they appeared to you before they finish their inhale. The bells in your head fade into nothing. Peace and quiet once more. You let out a sigh, rolling your neck and cracking your knuckles before you turn to face the others. “Okay, let’s get to Coran’s land. Allura?” She nods and holds her hands out. You hesitate before grabbing one, holding your other hand out to Hunk.

“Oh, princess, I’d love to hold your hand, what an honor.” Lance is smiling in a weird way that you think might mean he’s trying to be suave. He’s not. He is whatever the exact opposite of suave is, it is him. Lance completes the circle with minimal other comments, however, and you leave Hunk’s planet.

You open your eyes to see a land covered in storm clouds. The rain is falling heavily onto hills of sand, but there is no breeze, and things are heavy with static charge. It sends your skin crawling with anticipation. Whatever. You just need to find the one remaining person you’ve never seen before on an alien planet. Piece of cake. You let your eyes sweep over the annoyingly similar landscape. The others are doing the same behind you, and it’s Allura who sees something first.

“Over there!” You jerk around to see where she’s pointing, and you can barely see a bright blue speck in the distance. You all look at each other before Lance takes off like a shot.

“Last one there is a rotten egg!” You, Hunk, and Allura follow after him, catching up after a few minutes. It doesn’t take long after that for the sky to open up and pour over you all. Your clothes don’t get wet, even as you can feel the rain pelting at your face and body. It’s weird, and kind of unsettling, but it’s also kind of fun. All of the joy of running around in the rain without any of the bone chilling coldness that sets in after a while. The rain also doesn’t seem to be doing much for the sand underneath you, other than fading away right before it hits the surface of the planet. You hate this goddamn game, you swear.

You close in on the blue house, and Allura is the one who knocks on the door. You’re a step behind her, ready to protect her, just in case. She is still soft and squishy, after all, and you can time hop everyone all over the place if anything happens. After a few seconds, the door opens, and a man with bright orange hair stands in the threshold. Allura screams.

“Coran, what are you doing here?” She throws her arms around him and he wastes no time in swinging her around in circles just beyond the doorway. You are so confused right now. They know each other? What?

“Allura! Oh, it’s wonderful to see you again!” They release each other, and Coran holds Allura by the shoulders, straightening his arms out to give her a once-over. “Why, you’ve grown so big!” So they know each other… but it’s been a while since they’ve seen each other? You are abruptly reminded of your own person who you loved deeply but didn’t get to see for a year. How long have they been separated by this godforsaken game? Even longer than you and Shiro? It seems a terrible fate to you, to only be reunited under the circumstances of the universe’s destruction.

“Sorry, who are you? Like, how do you two know each other?” Hunk’s question is the one you all want to ask, but you are still stuck in a quiet haze of sadness and confusion, and Lance doesn’t have enough tact to ask that politely. Allura and Coran part, but stay holding each other’s arms.

“He’s my uncle!” And you did not see that one coming, wow. They don’t look related, but as you look closer, you suppose the jawline is vaguely similar, and the eyes are both strange colors. You can’t really move past his bright orange hair against Allura’s shocking white. Coran’s eyes have zeroed in on something over your shoulder, his brows furrowed, and you turn sharply, your sword already falling out of your strife specibus and into your hand. Lance sees you pull your weapon and his rifle is out in seconds, his eye lined up with the scope.

“Oh, it’s just Shiro and the others.” Everyone lets out a deep sigh of relief and you all look at each other before you start laughing. It’s been a stressful day, and you need this, even if nothing is really funny about this situation at all.

“What are you guys laughing at?” Matt bumps into you with his shoulder as he lands, and Shiro is a little bit behind him. Pidge’s head pops up over Matt’s shoulder and you realize he’s carrying her on his back. You smile at them, because it’s nice, having small moments like this in the middle of the war you’ve been dropped into. It reminds you that all of you are only teenagers, not soldiers. Except Coran. As an uncle, he’s gotta be older, but you’ll be assed if you can figure out his age. He’s got the kind of face that could be an older looking 30 or a young looking 60. Whatever, you suppose it doesn’t particularly matter, not when he shuffles you all into his house once Shiro lands beside all of you letting go of Ryou’s hand where they must have been flying together.

“I’ve got lots of food in here! Once I figured out how to alchemize things correctly, it was very easy to expand from there. Pumpkins are still the easiest, though.” He’s leading you through the front of his house, and it’s all brassy wood, warmer that what you would’ve expected from the modern outside. The kitchen is only slightly less woody, with white marble countertops and stainless steel appliances. There’s an open door at the far end of the kitchen, and through it you can see the beginning struts of what you remember to be the alchemizer. He opens a cupboard and pulls out dishes and glasses for the lot of you, but they get placed to the side as he pulls a pad of paper from the wall. “What do you want to eat?”

You take a moment to think about it, and realize you are ravenous. You had breakfast 10.27 hours ago, and your stomach is letting you know. At least you’ve had a lot on your mind in those 10 hours, so you can forgive yourself the overlooking of basic necessities. As it is, you’ll take the offer of food without question, especially when he must have already had his own dinner cooking, and it smells delicious. Hunk seems to be smelling the same thing you are, and strolls over to the pot on the stove. He lifts the lid and uses the ladle on the side to taste some of the broth. He promptly spits it back out in the most dramatic display you think you’ve ever seen.

“What did you do to this poor thing?” His outburst makes Lance laugh a little bit, but he stifles his giggles when Pidge gives him an elbow. Coran frowns at Hunk, who did just insult him in his own home. Shiro’s arm comes around your shoulders and he meets your eyes with a small grin. You wrap your own arm around his waist; you don’t miss Ryou looking at the two of you out of the corner of his eye. Your attention is drawn back to the group, though, when Hunk starts talking loudly again. “No, no, I’m sorry, but I have to put a stop to this.” He’s got the pot next to the sink now, and Coran is wrestling him over it.

“Coran, come now, you’ve always known you weren’t one for the stove. The oven was more of your calling.” Allura’s soft voice calls over the countertops. You turn to see the kind smile on her face, soft laughter lines around her mouth. Coran turns to her with a theatrical pout twisting his features, screwing up his moustache. She’s laughing now, gentle so as to not offend her uncle further, but he seems to be taking it rather well all in all. The soup that was in the pot sloshes down the drain, and Hunk grabs the sponge to wipe the rest of it down.

“How do we feel about… hmm.” Hunk turns to you with a glint in his eye. “Hey, Keith, can you use your time thing to speed up cooking times?” You are surprised by his question. You’ve never even thought to use your Godtier powers for anything that mundane, but you haven’t had them for long enough outside of life or death situations to really have the time to consider it. But now that you’re thinking about it-

“I mean, probably?” You really don’t know the limitations of your powers, and doing something frivolous like this might help you get a better grasp on them. “I can try it.” Hunk’s face lights up, and he grabs at the knife block, handing a small paring knife to Lance, and then grabbing a slightly larger one for you. He pushes the both of you over to the counter, and Coran produces cutting boards from seemingly nowhere. Hunk disappears with Coran into the alchemization room as you and Lance look at each other. Pidge is doing something in the corner with her phone, and Matt is exploring the rest of the bottom floor of the house. You look down the line of doorways to see it open up into something that looks like a sun room, full of glass and light. Beyond that, you can see the storms approaching from the horizon.

“How do we feel about stew and bread, guys?” And, wow, that sounds absolutely delicious and you waste no time in agreeing with the others that that meal is definitely what Hunk should make. He comes in with carrots and potatoes and a sack of flour. Coran follows behind him with a chunk of red meat that you couldn’t name the animal of if you were paid to. Coran is carrying celery, too, and gestures to a cabinet when Hunk looks back at him. It turns out to hold jars upon jars of herbs, which all look like the same green flakes to you, but Hunk knows more about it that you do, it seems, because he pulls no less than 10 jars down from the cupboard, the clink of glass on the counter a nice sound to hear amid the rest of the silence. “You two, peel and chop.” Hunk fixes you and Lance with a stare, gesturing with his fingers the universal sign of “I’m watching you.” You smile a little bit and pull the carrots toward you with no complaint.

“What do we want to listen to, guys?” Pidge seems to be asking about music, you guess, but you doubt anyone wants to listen to the 80s dad rock you frequent. Lance, however, has no qualms letting everyone know he wants to listen to a mix of Kesha, Macklemore, and the Jonas Brothers. You’ve heard of Kesha, actually, but not the others, even though Lance is chattering to you like you personally know the sex god that is Nick Jonas. Sure, Lance, totally. Pidge acquiesces, it seems, because boyband pop starts playing over an unseen speaker. Lance is singing along so enthusiastically that Shiro ends up taking the knife from him before he cuts one of his fingertips off. He slides up next to you as Lance grabs Pidge by the hands and starts dancing with her in the open space of the foyer. The open floor plan of the house lets you see Matt and Allura join in.

“It’s nice to have this peace.” Lance, through persistence and seemingly little care for his desire to not do so, drags Ryou up into their little dance circle as the song changes to something techno-ish with a strong feminine voice. “So much happened today.” Shiro puts the knife down to rub at his face. He succeeds in rubbing potato onto the skin next to his right eyebrow. You laugh a little and reach up a hand to brush it away. He leans into your hand a little, and you pull away with some reluctance. There will time to hold him later, but Hunk will have your hide if you don’t chop these vegetables. Shiro gets the message, because he quarters the potatoes like the hand he’s holding the knife with isn’t made of glowing light. You peel and cut the carrots, humming along as the songs change and you only know every third one. Hunk is adding flour and yeast to a bowl, and you suppose it must be the bread he was talking about earlier.

“Pidge! I have the perfect song!” Lance is talking pretty loudly to be heard over the music, which changes almost an instant later. Even you haven’t been living under a rock your whole life, so you recognize “Dancing Queen” when it comes on. It’s less surprising when you can barely hear Meryl Streep singing over Lance’s belting voice. Even Hunk wipes his hands on his apron so Lance doesn’t get flour all over his hands when he drags his best friend onto the impromptu dance floor. Shiro sets his knife down and holds his hand out to you. You place your own knife on the edge of the cutting board so it won’t move and take it.

“Come on, Coran, you must join us!” Allura is smiling so wide, now, and her laughter adds to the melody of the song. She takes her uncle by the hand and spins him into the middle of the circle that seems to have formed as you and Shiro join the group. You all jump to the beat, grinning and laughing, and singing along as loudly and badly as you can, because you are all children and too many of you have died today to mourn the loss that has not happened, because you all came back with powers you don’t understand. Fuck, you missed your boyfriend, and Allura and Coran had been apart for so long. It’s all you can do to sing and dance along as friends even if you didn’t know half of these people before today, even if you killed and were almost killed by some of the people dancing next to you. You are so tired.

The song finishes, and you all disperse, even as Macklemore and Kesha sing about the good old days. You and Shiro return to chopping with smiles on your faces, but smaller ones, softer ones. Hunk is whistling as he kneads the dough, and Pidge and Lance are still swaying to the tune. You can’t remember the last time you prepared and ate dinner with this many people. Certainly not at the orphanage, and your father was never quite keen on home cooked meals together, particularly towards the end. You put it out of your mind. The past is not something you should be focusing on, not when the future is so close, and so terrifying.

“Lighten up, Keith, jeez.” It’s Pidge, calling out to you from across the floor. You twitch an eyebrow at her, and she seems to catch your meaning. She seems to pluck the thought right from your head, in fact. “I don’t need to hear your thoughts to know you’re thinking about heavy shit. You look constipated.” Shiro’s startled bark of a laugh makes you drop your knife, and it barely misses your fingers. “But I did hear a couple sentimental feelings about sharing meals.” Her grin is sly, and one you would like to wipe off her face, but Matt touches your shoulder and Pidge’s face drops. “Matt, what did you do to him?”

“I didn’t do anything?” Matt seems rather concerned. He slowly withdraws his hand from you, and Pidge’s face smooths over a bit. He touches your shoulder again, so that her brow furrows almost like a command.

“You’re doing something.” She focuses more on him. “And you’re doing it to yourself, too.” She stares harder, and her face turns a little red. Did she stop breathing? “Both of you are blank. Like there’s a black hole where your thoughts should be.” Shiro is looking between the two of you, but it’s Ryou who opens his mouth.

“It’s his aspect. He’s Void, and a Bard to boot, so his powers obstruct yours. No mind to steal if there’s no mind there.” His words make sense, you think, but you don’t know enough about the game and classpects in general to dispute him. You briefly wonder if moonlightAscending told him all this, because your Shiro certainly didn’t seem to know this much.

“Okay, rude, I have a brain.” You do feel that’s worth pointing out, because you are still clearly having thoughts, even with Matt’s hand on your shoulder. They didn’t just stop with the contact. Ryou sighs out a laugh.

“Think of it less that your mind is gone and more like it used to be like a book for Pidge to read, only now Matt’s closed it. Hidden it from Pidge’s view, so to speak.” And that’s confusing, but you wouldn’t exactly expect them to understand your powers, so you can only think it fair. Pidge obviously has some handle on it, and Matt even seems to have a vague notion of what he can do. Neither of them have killed anyone by accident yet, so. You’ll leave it at that.

“Okay…” Pidge is still looking at you all confused, but it clears up when Matt takes his hand from your shoulder again. She stops looking at you when you start thinking of the constellations according to Greek legend. Good to know that that’s boring enough for her to tune you out when you’d really like to not have your mind read. That’s a freaky power, and one are happy you don’t have.

“How do you know all of this?” Shiro is asking the question you all probably want to, and it sets Ryou frowning. He opens his mouth, but pauses.

“I’m not actually sure? It was kind of just all in my head when I woke up on Derse, but I don’t remember learning any of it.” His hand comes up to scratch at the side of his head. He looks the picture of confusion, which must be a terrible feeling for him, not knowing how he knows so much about the game. “Most of it seems to be true, though, so I haven’t worried too much about it.” His head comes back down to his side, and he looks between you and Shiro. “Do you think it’s concerning?” You and Shiro exchange a glance. If it’s just knowledge put into his head, then it shouldn’t be too worrisome, but if someone is behind all of it, if someone has access to everything in his head, then it’s definitely something you should be keeping an eye on.

“No, I’m sure it’s fine.” And Shiro is lying, you know he’s lying because his eyebrow twitched the same way it always has when he doesn’t tell the truth. Ryou apparently doesn’t notice. Allura’s eyes linger on Shiro’s face, but she lets it go, too. Hunk nudges you on the elbow and breaks the tension that had been slowly building.

“You feel like speeding up dinner, bud?” You turn your back on the rest of the gathering to follow Hunk to the stove. You have no idea if you can even work your powers like this. Normally, when you send things through time, they aren’t affected by the passage. Now you need to directly affect the stew in a way that you’ve never aged people or anything else. Bluh. You focus on the stew, focus on its timeline. If you can just speed it up, kind of like- no, not like that. You can feel it getting strange, the way you’ve noticed things do right before they go through the time stream. So maybe not like that then.

“Uh, I’m not quite sure how.” You can feel the red rushing up to your face when Hunk levels you with a look of surprise. “Sorry. Um.” You reach your hand back out, feeling for how the time changes around it. It’s then that you notice the bells are not ringing. Not in your head anyway, but it seems the stew has its own bells, and when you listen closer (you don’t actually listen closer, you listen differently, but that sounds weird (ha, sounds)) you find that everything around you have its own set of bells, and that they’re all chiming at the same rhythm. Is there a way to speed that up, maybe? You change the way you’re looking at the pot, so you don’t quite see the time threads keeping it lined up with the timeline, but you see a small set of bells hooked over the thread like a pulley system.

“Uh, Keith?” You must have been acting weird because Hunk snaps you back to the present. It’s quiet, and everything you’re seeing is back to normal. Okay, new power set.

“Yeah, one second. How long should I speed this up?” Wait, that wasn’t right. “What speed does this take?” Okay, Keith, get it the fuck together. “How long does this take to cook?” Ha, got it. Take that words.

“Uh, like a few hours maybe?” You must give him a look, because he gets more specific. “Five hours.” Okay, five hours, you got this. You reach your hand out again. “Wait!” You pull back. “Maybe, don’t do the full five hours. Maybe do like four and a half, so that we can make the bread come out around the same time.” Okay, fine, four and a half hours. You stretch your hand again, giving Hunk a last glance to make sure he won’t interrupt again. The bells come easier to your sight, and setting them to chime faster is easy. You kind of just… tap them, even though you don’t physically touch anything, and they start ringing faster, swinging back and forth faster. You watch with the part of you that isn’t focused on the time magic you’re currently bullshitting your way through how the ingredients start getting darker and softer. The broth starts to simmer.

Slowing it down to real time is something else, though. You kind of just focus on the alpha chime that’s ringing deep under your sternum and the bells slow under your gaze, until they match the tolling of proper time. You let yourself focus back in on your surroundings and the time streams fade around you. You blink a few more times and find Hunk staring at you. You suppose it probably looked a lot weirder for him, considering he can’t see time like you can. You don’t actually know what he does, actually, and the gentle green symbol on his chest isn’t very helpful.

“Anything else?” Hunk shakes his head, but more in the sense that he was zoned out and had to force himself back into paying attention, rather than dismissing you and your powers. He’s still staring at you and frowning. “Hunk?” He blinks, and his stare gets less intense.

“Yeah, the bread is over here. Just needs to rise for an hour or so.” You reach out a hand again, but Hunk grabs your wrist. You glance over to him, questioning. “What do you do, when you do that?” You aren’t quite sure what he’s asking.

“I’m making it travel through time faster than we do?” Your voice goes up at the end, like you don’t know how your own powers work (you don’t, but Hunk doesn’t need to know that). Hunk shakes his head again, and you get the feeling that while he may be looking at you, he isn’t seeing you.

“You get all weird. Like you’re old and young and a million different versions of yourself.” Hunk’s forehead lines in his concentration. “And something about you is just so off I don’t even know.” You think of the one thing that’s been viscerally wrong with you since you died.

“My heartbeat, right?” Hunk’s eyes widen, like you giving him the information made everything else slot into place. “It’s not normal.” Hunk’s nodding frantically, and his eyes drop to your chest, zeroing on where your heart is chiming in your chest. “It keeps the time. Doesn’t go faster, doesn’t go slower.” The others are looking a little concerned, but it isn’t hurting you, so it’s kind of whatever.

“I don’t like it.” It’s Hunk, plain and simple, and his bluntness makes you gasp out a startled laugh, which breaks the tension between the two of you, and you are both laughing in seconds. You do notice that Hunk is still careful not to touch you, even as the two of you lean into each other in your mirth. You’re surprised to find that kind of hurts.

You reach out and speed up the rising process, and Hunk looks away. Jeez, he’s really got a problem with you. Whatever, it’s not like you care. Once you’re done, you turn away, heading over to sit at the low wood table next to Shiro. Now that you’re fully paying attention to the present, your tiredness hits you all at once. You close your eyes for a moment, but you end up being nudged awake by Shiro as Hunk sets a bowl down in front of you. There are two brown loaves at either end of the table you are all crowded around, and Shiro hands you a piece before ripping another one for himself.

You sit up enough to fork the stew into your mouth, pausing after the first bite because it’s still pretty hot. There’s chattering conversation going on over your head, mostly between Allura and Coran, and Hunk, Pidge, and Lance, but you aren’t paying attention to it. Your focus is mostly on the food in front of you, and the place where your shoulder presses up against Shiro’s, which you are reminded of every time either of you move.

You finish your dinner quickly enough, and kind of just exist while you wait for Shiro to finish, too. Your head is actually quiet, for once, though you know it won’t last. God, you’re so tired. You rest your head on Shiro’s shoulder and he pauses eating for a moment to press a kiss to the top of your head. You sigh. It was a long fucking day, and you don’t think tomorrow is going to be any shorter. You close your eyes again.

You don’t wake up immediately when you feel yourself being moved. You’re aware, kind of, and your eyes open, but Shiro is shushing you and running a hand through your hair, so you fall back asleep. You lived through several hours’ worth more of time than the rest of them did today, you can forgive yourself for being too exhausted to function.

You think you wake up sometime in the middle of the night but the details of the nightmare that woke you are long gone. The only thing you remember is a feeling of not knowing yourself, and of being lost in a great expanse. The thoughts of loneliness are dismissed when you wake for the last time with your head tucked under Shiro’s chin. The morning light is just starting to come through the window, and it makes him seem so soft. You reach out a hand slowly and lay your fingertips on his jaw, careful to keep your touch light. Shiro doesn’t stir, and you move your hand farther back to scrape against the closely shaved hair at the back of his head. Shiro shifts a bit, at that, turning his shoulder and head more into you. You keep still, but when he doesn’t move again, you resume your petting. Fuck, you missed him.

There are clattering noises coming from the kitchen, and you know you should probably get up. It takes a few minutes to extricate your limbs from where they were intertwined with Shiro’s, but you manage it. Hunk is the only one in the kitchen when you enter, and you immediately want to leave again. He’s obviously got a problem with you, and you don’t like being where you aren’t wanted. Unfortunately, Hunk spots you before you can abscond.

“Keith!” He’s smiling as he mixes something in a bowl and he gestures for you to come in with his shoulder. “What’s up, buddy?” That’s it, you’re officially confused. Based on how he acted yesterday, you and Hunk are not “buddies”. He could barely look at you last night, and now he wants to chat it up. You miss the orphanage that had absolutely no people who wanted to interact with you.

“Uh, hey, Hunk. Nothing really. I, uh, just woke up.” Your words are so painful stilted that you kind of wish you didn’t speak at all, as awkward as that may have been or not. You clear your throat so your next words come out stronger. "What have you been doing?" Hunk shrugs and turns his back on you to place the bowl on the counter. He places his hands on either side of it, and you see his shoulders sort of... slump.

"Look, Keith, man, I have to apologize." Why is this morning just full of confusing moments for you? "Last night I wasn't cool about your powers, and that wasn't cool." He looks up at you. "It's just, I don't know if you know, but I've got these life powers or something, and that means I can kind of see your life force." Wow, you feel bad for the guy, that's gotta suck to see people's life forces. "And your's is just so messed up." Okay, that's understandable but ouch.

"Wow, thanks, Hunk." You stop yourself from crossing your arms over your chest, but just barely. "Way to make a guy feel good about himself." Hunk shakes his head and stands up fully.

"I mean, it's not just yours?" He runs his hands over his face. "It's like- okay, one second." Hunk grabs a pad of paper from the counter next to him, and he scrabbles around for a pen until finally finding one in a drawer off to the side. He motions for you to come closer as he draws on the paper. "So it's kind of like this." You look down at the paper, where Hunk is sketching a crude stick figure. "So everybody has their own life force, right? Kind of like a glow." He draws a border closely around the stick figure. "And then the people who went Godtier have a second one." He draws another border, this one made up of dots instead of a solid line. "It's different from the first one, like they came back different from whatever happens in between dying and coming back.

"But yours is so messed up, because it can't decide how many of them want to be there. You have," Hunk looks up at you, his rushed words finally slowing down so you can try and puzzle out just what he's saying. "You have more than I can count. And whenever you do something with your time powers, it's like all the layers get brighter? And sometimes you get more, like you did back when we were fighting all those people and you were bleeding from everywhere." Hunk keeps circling the figure on the paper.

"What does that mean?" Life is an aspect that is decidedly not something you understand the scope of. Hunk shakes his head, but it's more like he's trying to figure something out.

"I'm not quite sure. At first I thought it had something to do with your powers, and I still think it does, kind of." Hunk puts the pen down and rips the top paper off of the pad. "I think most of it is to do with how you're kind of outside of the time stream relative to a lot of us, so I can't really tell which one of you I'm supposed to look at." He smiles a little bit. "Like when you make a three-dimensional picture, so there's a red layer and a blue layer, and then there's you, the picture that's supposed to make sense." It makes a little bit more sense when he puts it like that, but you still don't really get it.

"Oh, I get it. Sorry for giving you a headache to look at, or whatever." You can't stop yourself from folding your arms over your chest this time, but Hunk doesn't seem to take offense. He picks the bowl back up and resumes his mixing.

"It's better than Shiro and Ryou, if I'm being honest." Hunk lets out a small laugh, and he sort of leans forward, like he's about to tell you a secret. "I know Shiro was kind of worried about him being, like, a clone or something, but their life forces are completely different from each other." Hunk straightens and puts the bow down to grab a pan from the cabinet. You aren't quite sure what to do with that information. You grab a glass and fill it with water from the tap, only idly wondering how the hell Coran's house is getting water from a source that doesn't exist in this plane of reality. Ugh, this is too much thinking for this soon after waking up.

You sit at the table with your water and mull over everything Hunk just told you. It really is a lot to think about, and you only actually understand about a quarter of it by the time the others start trickling in to the smell of Hunk’s breakfast barrage. On the counter are plates piled high with bacon, waffles, and various cut up fruits. Shiro places a kiss on the top of your head as he passes you and your mouth draws up into a smile. Everybody gets their food and finds a seat at the table. 

Hunk is the last one to take a seat, putting a large steaming teapot in the center of the table as he does so. You and Allura reach for it at the same time, but you back off and give her a smile. She returns it as she lifts the pot to fill her mug with tea. The pot gets passed around the table, Coran and Hunk both pouring themselves tea, before it gets to you. You fill your cup and are about to put the teapot back down, but Shiro nudges his mug in your direction and gives you a small smile. God, this boy. You pour Shiro his tea before grabbing the milk pitcher. He gives you a face, but you don’t let that stop you from adding the milk to your tea.

“So, does anyone have anything to say before you get started?” You don’t know what Allura plans to get started, but there is that one thing that that prince asshole told you. You wave your hand a little bit and suddenly all eyes are on you. “Keith?”

“Uh, yeah, apparently this airApparent dude has Pidge and Matt’s dad? He didn’t seem like he was going to hurt him though, just that he has him?” Pidge drops her fork, and Matt does not seem any less angered by the news. “I’ll message him after breakfast to get a meeting place.”

“It’ll be a trap, obviously, so we have to be careful about the extraction.” Shiro is calm next to you, and Matt and Pidge focus their intensity on him. “But we’ll get him back, guys, don’t worry.” The Holt siblings don’t relax at all, but Shiro is not deterred. “Finish up, everybody. Keith-” he turns to you- “get that asshole to arrange a meeting.” You nod, pushing your chair back from the table.

“I’ll let you know what happens.” You step outside and sit on the sand a little ways from the front door. Ugh, you kind of don’t want to talk to this douchebag, but you have to. For Pidge and Matt. Ugh.

brassKnuckles [BK] began pestering airApparent [AA] at 9:27!

BK: hey shitstain u up  
AA: If You Are Going To Annoy Me  
AA: At Least Use Better Insults  
BK: what would you have me call you o mighty fuckass  
AA: I Do Not Know What I Expected  
AA: What Do You Want Human  
BK: the human lusus for starters  
BK: or whatever the fuck youre calling mr. Holt  
AA: Ah Yes  
AA: The “Father” As You Put It  
BK: yeah and we want him back  
AA: Ah But What Will You Give Me In Return  
AA: Cannot Trade Something For Nothing You Know  
BK: how bout this  
BK: well spare your sorry life  
BK: and ill stop pidge from kicking the ever loving shit out of you  
AA: You Think The Small One Can Hurt Me  
AA: I Am A Prince  
BK: you keep saying that like you think i care what it means  
BK: you die just like everything else im sure  
BK: and she wont be swift with your death  
BK: i daresay revenge is a just killing isnt it  
AA: Then It Is Decided  
AA: A Fight To The Death  
AA: The Small One And I  
AA: Winner Gets The Lusus  
AA: The Land Of Prayers And Ruin When The Sun Is Highest In The Sky  
AA: I Will Be There  
BK: oh buddy you just dug your own grave  
BK: id say good luck but youd need a light player for that  
BK: and even that wouldnt save you  


brassKnuckles [BK] ceased pestering airApparent [AA] at 9:42!

Wow, that felt really badass. Time to go tell Pidge she gets to fuck this guy the fuck up. You get up from your seated position and stretch your hands out above your head. You take a moment to wonder where the fuck the Land of Prayers and Ruin is, but it’s not your biggest worry. Someone must know where that is. You go back inside and see everyone still seated around the table.

“Sup, kids.” Yeah, smooth, nice. Everyone looks up at you. Shiro even stands. “So, it’s gonna be a duel. Pidge versus Lotor, winner gets Mr. Holt. It’s gonna happen at noon at some place called the Land of Prayers and Ruin?” Matt and Pidge have their heads bowed in close to each other now, hands gesticulating and they talk lowly to each other. Shiro pales.

“That’s my land. I don’t understand why he wants to meet there?” You shrug. He didn’t exactly give you any answers either.

“I don’t know. But it’s not like it matters. Pidge can kick his ass and then we can get her dad back.” Shiro looks over his shoulder to where Pidge and Matt are still talking. Pidge has a holopad in her hand, and they seem to be drawing out some sort of plan. 

“I don’t know; he’s definitely planning something.” Shiro looks back at you. “We need to be really careful.” You give him a look.

“No, Shiro, I was gonna send her in all alone with no back up at all.” He looks sheepish enough at your sarcasm, so you take mercy on him. “I’ll be there, and you probably should be, too. It’s your land and all.” You give it another moment’s thought. “And Matt, since it’s his dad, too. Hunk, Lance, and Allura can hang out out of sight.” The Holt siblings look over to you, and you move over to them. You can feel Shiro trailing your shoulder, and all four of your heads come together over the holopad.

“So,” Pidge says, “we figure the fight will be here, in this colosseum looking thing.” Her hand circles around a structure on a map. “There are ruins all around that are pretty easy to hide in.” She draws her hand up, and the holopad generates three-dimensional rubble surrounding the colosseum. Small spheres of color are moving around, and you realize that they are supposed to be you and your group. The red and gray dots are close to a dark green one. All three are far from the dark blue and light green dots in the center of the colosseum. A yellow dot is near the north end, and a blue dot is at the southern end. A pink dot is particularly far, and is accompanied by an orange and a purple one. Several black dots blink around the perimeter of the colosseum.

“The black dots are where we think Lotor will have his own back up people. We aren’t sure, so there’s a lot of them, and none locked in. We’ll have to keep an eye out for any purple assholes.” Matt emphasizes his words with concise gestures. Shiro points at where some of the black dots are.

“We’ll have to be sure to keep Allura safe. We need a space player, and she’s the only one in the game.” Shiro makes eye contact with all of you in turn. “Without her, we’re doomed. No new universe, no end to this game.” You all nod.

“We should get going soon. Better to map out the area beforehand than let Lotor get there first.” Matt is being reasonably logical, and that’s how you know he’s scared shitless. You can’t blame him. You don’t have a little sister, but you suspect that not only would Matt kill for Pidge, he’d make sure whatever bodies there were would never get found.

You all separate and gather what items you’ll need. None of you are quite sure if you’ll have time to come back here, to this cozy house that gave you refuge, so you each alchemize a backpack and fill it with essentials. Coran closes the door behind him with a solidity that shakes you all to your foundations. There’s a storm on the horizon. You take to the skies.

Reaching Shiro’s land doesn’t take long, and the gentle sunlit glow of the place doesn’t help ease the memories of the last time you were here as they come rushing back to you. Jesus, that was yesterday. Fuck, you’re tired. You shake it off as best you can and zone back into the planning session the team is having.

“And then once Pidge is fighting Lotor, we’ll secure Mr. Holt.” Shiro is dragging his fingers through a hologram, the same one the Pidge had used earlier. “Keith and I will be here. Hunk, Ryou, and Coran, I want you guys guarding Allura. Lance, you’ll be our eyes in the sky. Shoot anyone who’s not us.” Lance looks a little queasy at the instruction, but you trust him to have your back. He did die for you all, after all.

You break up to head to your respective positions for the coming battle. Lotor isn’t on the field yet, but you can see a distant ship approaching your location fast. You and Shiro stand in the open seating area of the arena. The quiet murmuring of the land is setting you slightly on edge. Pidge looks so small in the middle of the dirt field, dwarfed by marble and limestone.

“Are we sure about this?” You keep your voice low as you ask Shiro, so no one else will hear your doubt. His mouth grits into a straight line.

“No.” He closes his eyes and lets out a deep breath. “But it’s the only thing we’ve got.” His eyes are still closed when he reaches his hand out to find yours. He only misses once, hitting you in the leg, and you both laugh when his golden palm finally touches yours. It’s a release of tension you both sorely need, and you lean into each other as the ship gets ever closer. You notice the murmuring get slightly louder, but you ignore that as the purple ship touches down just inside the colosseum.

It’s small, and incredibly aerodynamic. Three people step out, and you immediately choke on the ice that suddenly sprouted in your chest. Fuck, it’s that fucking witch and her fucking powers. Pidge looks like an iron rod was just stuck through her spine and the murmuring gets louder. Shiro’s staring out at her with worry clear on his face, and you can’t comfort him through this. If the witch is here, Pidge will be off her game. She’s going to lose.

brassKnuckles [BK] created the memo “We’re Fucked”!

brassKnuckles [BK] added kerberosBound [KB], brainlessBeauty [BB], peachyYouth [PY], yikesParticipant [YP], kingdomKeeper [KK] , and yesterdaysYeoman [YY]!

BK: okay so that fucking witch is here  
BK: how can we stop her  
BB: im not sure but we gotta do it fast  
BB: im nto letting my little sis die out here  
PY: We could try helping her?  
PY: Or maybe fight the witch ourselves??  
YP: I’ve got a clear shot  
KB: Do not take it, Lance.  
KB: If we shoot first it’s no holds barred, and we still don’t have Mr. Holt  
BB: as much as i hate to say it  
BB: caps rite  
YP: Okay fine I’ll stand down  
BK: we still have to help Pidge  


You look up from your phone to where Lotor and his witch are advancing on Pidge. Wait, wasn’t there a third person that came off the ship with them?

BK: does anyone have eyes on the other flighty broad  
YP: Yeah I see her  
YP: She’s circling around to Allura, Coran, and Hunk  
PY: Oh yeah, I see her :0  
KK: I’m sure we can handle one person, Keith.  
BK: just be careful  
BK: youre not allowed to die you know  
KK: I appreciate the concern.  
KK: But one person will be dying in this fight.  
KK: And it most certainly will not be me.  


You don’t know what to do with that.

BK: damn Allura that was hardcore  
BK: have fun fucking a bitch up  


Nailed it.

BB: guys pls my bb sis is still gonna fight this douchebag  
KB: I think I can help her, actually.  
KB: Do the rest of you hear that?  


You look up at Shiro, who’s got his head tilted slightly to the left.

“The murmuring?” He looks at you with wide eyes.

“Keith, it’s basically screaming. Hundreds of souls calling out for help.”

PY: Uh, Shiro, are you okay? :|  
PY: I don’t hear anything  
KK: I think that may be a situation concerning your aspect, Shiro.  
KK: We are, after all, in your land.  
KB: Makes sense.   
KB: I’ll handle the Pidge-Lotor situation.  
KB: Allura, Coran, and Hunk, take care of that third person.  
KB: Keith, see what you can do about the witch.  
KB: Lance, you’re back up.  
KB: Everyone got it?  
BK: yes sir  
BB: aye aye capn  
KK: We’ll handle it, Shiro.  
YP: Sharpshooter is locked and loaded  


kerberosBound [KB] closed the memo “We’re Fucked”!

You have your marching orders, and you pause long enough only to give Shiro a lingering kiss on the corner of his mouth.

“Stay safe. Please.” He gives you his word, and you’ll have to take it. You move around the back of the arena without looking behind you. You duck into a stairwell and find yourself in a network of tunnels that, if this were a real colosseum, would have lead to cells and cages. As it is, you still pass empty rooms and discarded weapons. The ceiling begins to shake over your head, and you can tell the battle has begun. There is a certain spot where the soul-sucking feeling the witch puts out seems to be coming from, and you swear your head is clogged with cotton by the time you find the source. You pull your hoverboard from your sylladex and wonder how much force you’re going to have to come up with to burst through a few sheets of wood and a lot of sand. 

You are knocked from your calculations when everything around you stops shaking. Now or never, you suppose. You fire up the jet propulsion on the board, but freeze the front in time so the engine can build up some force. You wait a few more seconds before letting the whole thing go, and it shoots ceiling-ward, breaking through the wood in a crash of splinters. You protect your face and waste no time in jumping through the hole and into the arena. You glance around to take in your surroundings and do not like what you see.

Lotor is lying in a pool of what can only be his own purple blood. The disparity between it and his light blue outfit is disturbing. Pidge is also on the ground, grasping at her throat, eyes unseeing even as they focus in on Shiro over her. The witch was on the ground a moment ago, but she’s vanished while your back was turned. You will deal with her later; Pidge is the priority. 

You fall to your knees beside the two of them, and you wish you couldn’t see the absolute fear in Pidge’s eyes. She’s going to die, and she knows it. You and Shiro exchange a look over her head, and he nods. If she’s going to die, there’s only one thing that can save her, and the three of you are on the wrong world for it. 

He takes off and you are hot on his heels, avoiding his cape fluttering in his slipstream. You zip through the blankness of space, and you see the shiny glint of Pidge’s world just as she goes limp in Shiro’s arms. You are suddenly overcome with a wave of nausea so powerful you are surprised your entire stomach doesn’t just come out of your mouth when you lean over the side of Pidge’s quest bed pillar.

Shiro’s laid her on the green quest bed, her corpse seeming even smaller on the slab of stone. You turn your head into the crook of Shiro’s neck when nothing happens after a few moments and he puts his arms around you. Nothing used to make you feel safer than being in his arms, but somewhere between the apocalypse you started and your best friend’s little sister dying in your boyfriend’s arms, that stopped being true.

He tightens his grip around you, like he can sense your thoughts and you adjust your head so that you are looking over his shoulder. There are multicolored puffballs coming your way. Thank God, Pidge is going to live. 

You put your head back down into Shiro’s collar, and he brushes his hand over your head. He’s so warm, and you are so tired. A light shines from behind you, and it takes a lot of willpower to separate from Shiro. It always does. Pidge is alive, though, so that’s nice.

Her hood has two long, dark green tails, and her boots are a bright pink. She’s floating towards you two, and that’s when you realize you left everyone else on Shiro’s planet without telling them where you were going. Shit definitely went down while you were gone, you can tell. But they’re all good fighters with sickass powers, so you’re sure they’re fine.

“Shiro, we should get back to the others.” Pidge and Shiro turn to you. “I have a bad feeling about this.” Shiro nods and begins to come toward you, but stops when his phone chimes. He grimaces as he reads whatever he got sent.

“You and Pidge will have to go ahead- Allura just messaged me.” He pinches the bridge of his nose as his forehead creases. “Something about being accompanied by a knight to find the genesis frog?” Jeez. You wonder if this game could get any more fucked or confusing. It probably will. Bluh.

“That’s fine.” Pidge rests a hand on Shiro’s shoulder. “We’ll get the others and then meet you guys on Allura’s planet.” She looks between the two of you. “Everything will be fine.” Shiro darts forward and lands a short kiss on your cheek.

“See you two soon.” He’s gone before either of you can say anything more. You turn to Pidge, but she’s in the air already.

“Shit.” You take off after her, and it’s only a moment before you can pull on her hood tails from behind. “Last one back to the others is a rotten egg!” You take off like a shot, Pidge’s outraged shout following you. You end up beating her back, landing just outside the colosseum, where Matt is standing with some old guy you’ve only seen a couple times in pictures, Coran hovering at the edges of them.

“Keith!” Matt waves you over, and Mr. Holt offers his hand when you get close. You shake it, and are initially startled when his grip is pretty strong. “Where are the others?” Your brows furrow and you shoot Matt a look.

“They aren’t here?” Matt is the one who looks at you strange now. Like you should be the one to know where they are. Wait, speaking of suddenly missing people, where the hell is Pidge? Wasn’t she right behind you just a minute ago? You turn a 360, but there’s no green hood in sight. 

“We thought they went with you when Pidge went down.” Matt grabs your arm and he must compress the tendon because a fist forms of its own accord. “Is she okay?” His knuckles are white on your forearm, and you try and pry his hand away.

“She’s fine. She’s got a dork-ass hood and all in green.” Matt gives you a crooked smile, but it drops when the three of you hear a scream in the distance. Pidge. Matt starts to move, but you put a hand to his chest and push him back toward his dad. “Stay here and protect your dad. I’ve got her.” Matt is a furious, stuttering mess, but you don’t have time to hear what he’s trying to say. Coran grabs him by the shoulder to keep him grounded. Even Ryou has a hand on Matt, keeping him from shooting for his sister. You bolt toward where the scream seemed to come from. Everything kind of echoes here.

You come around a curve of crumbling stone and see Pidge get sucked into some kind of…. Thing. It’s an interconnected mess of light and color, vaguely humanoid shaped. Pidge just got absorbed into what would be the left arm; the right arm and the head are still a blindingly empty white. The legs are blue and yellow, which explains where Lance and Hunk got to. When you blink, the colors imprint themselves on the backs of your eyelids. 

There’s a purple body somewhere in front of the form so you duck behind some ruins just in case she sets her sights on you next. How the hell are you supposed to save those three when you have no clue how that juju thing even works. That’s the only thing this could be, after all. It could have been pulled directly from the page in Allura’s book, and with all the freaky powers around, you can’t be sure that that isn’t exactly what happened.

Either way, you are either royally screwed or kind of okay for now. Then another purple alien rounds the corner and sees you, and you know you’re fucked. She points a gun at you, and you are so lucky you dodged fast enough because the shot makes the pillar you were leaning against crumble to ashes.

Your knife drops from your strife specibus into your hand and you lunge for the alien, but she’s pretty quick and you miss her. She fires a few more shots at you, and she nails you right in the shoulder. Your scream is enough to make the other purple person look over at the pair of you from where they are still standing in front of Voltron. God, you are so fucking screwed.

“Acxa, I will deal with him. Go after the Heir!” The witch’s voice is worse than nails on a chalkboard, but her companion doesn’t seem to mind. She just turns her back on you and takes to the sky with her jet-shoes. What a rookie move. Never turn your back on a body, especially when it’s one as alive and kicking as yours. You throw your knife just as a bolt of purple lightning connects with your body, but your aim holds true. Axca drops like a sack of rocks just as your are thrown twenty feet in the air.

Landing hurts worse than being hit did, but you pull yourself up because you have to, because you aren’t quite sure Axca is actually dead, because your team is still trapped by that fucking witch. You claw your way to where her body is still sprawled out from landing and, yeah, she’s definitely dead. No one’s neck is supposed to be at that angle, alien or no.

You turn away from her to face the witch. She’s Godtier and obviously powerful, if the way your body still hurts like you got run over by a semi, like, 15 times is any indication. Your mind is going into that single-focus haze that usually happens whenever she’s around, but your lungs aren’t seizing in your chest, so that must be part of the other douchebag’s powers. If you’re to have any chance in saving the others, she needs to die.

You start running toward her, dodging as she throws more lightning at you. Your vision is going slightly purple the closer you get to her, but you ignore it in favor of swinging your knife at her. You miss, because she fucking teleports away. Of course she can teleport. What the ever loving fuck?

“Keith!” Your head swivels around to where Matt is waving you over. You scan everything around you as your glide over, but there seems to be no sign of her. You still keep half an ear out for anything amiss even as you listen to Matt. “Shiro just texted me something about a frog?”

“Oh, yeah, the genesis frog.” What even are the words coming out of your mouth right now? “It’s going to be the new universe, or something.” Why does this make actual sense to you, when before those words belonged nowhere near each other in casual conversation? 

“O… kay?” At least Matt isn’t too far gone for that to make sense to him, you suppose. “Anyway, he said that he was coming back here. The plan is for him to drop Allura off on Lance’s world while I bring my dad there. I told him you were fighting people, so he’s coming to help.” You take another look around.

“Well, I was, but she vanished.” Matt starts looking around too, head whipping from side to side. The witch is still nowhere to be seen. You turn back to Matt. “Look, you should go. Take your dad and the others and get to Allura. She needs more help than I will once Shiro gets here. Matt’s mouth twists into a frown, but he doesn’t argue. He just pulls you into a hug, and you duck your face into his weird ass hood before letting him go. Coran and Ryou pulls out their jetpacks and Matt picks his dad up piggy-back style, and they’re gone before anyone says goodbye.

“All alone again?” The chalkboard voice seems to be coming from everywhere, and you swing your knife around in a wide arc, in case she snuck up on you while you were distracted. Her laughter is just as grating as her voice, all nails crushing against glass, and you’d take your bell-infested planet over this echoing hell. She appears just behind you, and you swing around to face her just in time to get blasted by purple.

It sucks. You are losing this fight incredibly quickly; what’s worse is that you can’t even stop her as she corrals you closer and closer to the juju. You’re going to die here, with your lungs collapsing in your chest as your breath becomes visible in the suddenly freezing air. Shit. The douchebag is here.

“Well, well, well. I see your Knight has finally abandoned you.” Zarkon, the gigantic asshole, lands without so much as a sound next to the witch. “You are out of Time.” And, wow, this fuckwad is going to make a fucking pun before he kills you? You think the fuck not.

Your visions purples-out and all you know is the knife in your hand and the blood you can feel spurting over your hands, and the screaming like nails on glass. It’s only when a clock chime reverberates through your skull that you realize you never came close to touching Zarkon, not when his witch jumped in your way. Oh, God. You fucking killed her.

The body is fucking eviscerated, blood everywhere, and you are only thankful that she bleeds purple instead of red, because the iron tang is enough to make you want to puke. Each tick of the clock brings you more into yourself and away from the rage the witch controlled. The flashing colors settle on yellow and that’s the end of her. She’s actually dead.

You let out a sigh, which just reminds you of how there is still ice crystallizing in your chest cavity, because that monster is still there. You turn to face him fully and see beyond his shoulder that Shiro is coming into the atmosphere. You focus back on Zarkon, because he can’t see Shiro before the attack comes. So you distract him.

In hindsight, running straight at him probably wasn’t the best idea, but that’s only horrendously apparent now that he’s got you three feet off the ground, clawed hand wrapped around your throat. You see Shiro’s arm light up gold just as you are filled with a bone-melting, mind-shattering pain as white light surrounds you. Everything goes dark, and you lose yourself.

You can’t feel anything. Your thoughts are scattered, and you try to draw them to you, but they slip between your nonexistent fingers like sunbeams. Everything around you is a pulsing red that is tick-tocking along with the rhythm of the universe. You remember enough about whatever came before this red nothingness to remember that you are Time. You are Time and Time is you and you have existed at every moment of the universe that has ever been or will ever be. You aren’t sure how long you have been here (eternity) and you don’t know if you’ll ever be free (never).

There’s a brush at the horizon line of some swirling green thing, but it disappears before you can focus too closely on it. You try to think harder about what came before this, but you have nothing. You think vaguely there was something you were trying to do, but that’s as much as you understand.

A breath of air swishes past you, and you smell dirt on the breeze. You didn’t know you knew what dirt smelled like. There is no dirt here, in the vast emptiness of your prison. There’s no other wind, either, now that that breeze is gone.

The pulsing around you feels less like the steady metronome of a clock, now, and more like the steady beating of a heart. You try to focus on the feeling, because you are certain you had a heart, once.

The sharp green comes back and you are reminded of the name you once had. Keith. It hums in the background of your newly found consciousness, right in between the beats of your reclaimed heart. You are still spinning in the nonspace of this place, but you have your Mind again. You have your Heart.

There are voices calling to you from the distance, warping an aurora borealis of bright green, dark pink, and light green through the not-sky. The light green mass of energy reaches out towards you (is there even a you for it to reach?) and suddenly you are violently reminded of just how you got here and of who you left behind. 

Shiro. It is not your name that pulls you from the aether and resettles your skin haphazardly over your body. Shiro. How could you have forgotten him, after everything the two of you have been through? Shiro. Remembering the love of your life throws you back into awareness, and you realize you are not alone in this prison.

“Keith!” And it’s Pidge, the Hero of Mind, cloaked in bright green, who throws her essence around you first in a facsimile of a hug. Lance is next, and Hunk crushes the lot of you to him in some amalgamation of Time and Mind and Heart and Life. All four of you reach out beyond yourselves, and you feel everything shift.

You separate to find yourselves in a plane of stars and each other, outlined in purple and missing a fifth piece. He’s out there, somewhere, your Hope and your Knight, fighting against the Doom and the Lord. You can feel it, just beyond where this galaxy ends.

“We have to help him.” They all know who you’re talking about.

“But how?” It’s Lance with the reasonable question for the first time. “We’re trapped here.” You all look at each other, and for the first time since this blasted game started, you realize how very young you all are to be saving the universe. Or rather, to have destroyed it in the process of creating a new one. Hunk opens his mouth.

“We found each other.” He holds his hands out to all of you. “We can find him, too.” Lance grabs his hand and holds his other one out to Pidge. “Voltron is about unity, right? Working together for the ultimate prize and to defeat the worst evil.” You take Hunk’s other hand and Pidge completes the circle. The horizon flares with a sunrise of colors, but the sky stays resolutely dark.

“Are we doing this?” Pidge’s smirk is audible. Lance grins right back.

“We’re making this happen.” You roll your eyes before squaring up your shoulders. Everyone else straightens up a little more, too.

“Okay, guys, ready?” You get affirmatives from the rest of your team. “For Shiro.” Your hands tighten in their grips. “Form Voltron!”

Colors spiral out from your circle of energy, and you are assaulted by the sounds of clashing metal coming from all around you. Shiro and Zarkon come into slightly sharper focus, and initially you think you are re-entering the physical world before realizing the lot of you are actually pulling them into your spiritual one. They phase in an out of your sight until finally solidifying into sharp purple lines and washed out features. Not that that changes how Zarkon looks, really.

“Shiro!” You and Pidge hold out your hands to him, and he starts to run in your direction. Zarkon is not far behind.

“Voltron is mine!” He’s almost frothing at the mouth with how rabid he is, and the blood lust is clear in his eyes, even from far away. “The new universe is mine!” He swipes at Shiro, but his hand goes right through Shiro’s golden arm. Shiro’s glowing palm doesn’t hesitate to make contact with your own, however, and then your circle is complete. Everything goes white. The last thing you hear is Zarkon screaming.

You come to exactly where you left, and you see the others all scattered around you in the process of sitting up. You swivel your head around until you can see Shiro. In your scan of your surroundings, Zarkon is nowhere to be seen. Thankfully, it seems as though your little astral trip cleaned the blood off your hands and healed the wound on your shoulder. Left a nasty scar, though.

Holy shit. You guys actually did it. You fall back down onto your back and start laughing. Okay, you might be a little hysterical, but holy shit, you just killed the biggest asshole ever. You’ll allow yourself this. You take a deep breath to help center yourself back in your body, but it’s jarred right back out of your lungs when a clock chime rattles your bones. It’s not just in your head, though, because everyone is looking around wildly until you all see the grandfather clock flashing yellow and purple with each toll. There’s a strange, almost skull-looking symbol where the clock face should be, and with a final, echoing ring, the grandfather clock settles on purple. You feel a sense of finality about you and then the clock is gone.

“We should go get Allura.” It’s Hunk, his voice cracking on every other vowel, but it’s Hunk, and it’s relief so strong coursing through you it makes you stop before you realize that it isn’t all yours.

“Wait.” That’s you, you think. “Does anybody else feel this?” You feel a curiosity that isn’t yours plow through your mind. It’s so weird feeling other people. It’s almost like an afterimage of them, kind of like when you and Shiro combined powers, or you and Matt. It’s just that now there’s five of you. Traces of Life flicker through you, and it makes your step a little stronger. 

“Are anybody else’s ears ringing?” Lance is sticking his finger in his ear and wiggling it, like that will help anything. 

“It’s not a ring, dumbass, it’s a chime. Clocks and time shit, you know?” His face sours when his eyes land on you, but now that you’re all psychically connected, you know how bullshit his facade is. He doesn’t actually mind you all that much, and you’re surprised to find that you might actually consider him a friend. A far cry from where the two of you started, but you suppose a life or death, universe destroying game might speed up the friendship process.

Shiro latches on to your hand where he’s finally managed to scoot over to you, and you feel his Heart where Lance’s powers still cling to him like dust. You squeeze his fingers and use all your Hope and Heart and Mind to try and convey how very much he means to you. Red blooms over his cheekbones, highlighting his scar, and you can’t stop yourself, even though your feelings must be projecting to every one of the other players.

When you pull Shiro in to kiss him, he goes willingly. He’s soft, and whole, and warm, and his lips part so sweetly under yours when you move to deepen the kiss. You keep it short, no matter how everyone can feel how much you’d like to kiss him until the universe ends again, or maybe until your new one is created. He’d apparently gotten that little mission done.

“Let’s go find Allura.” Shiro’s smile is still so gentle and it stays on his face as the five of you all get up, groaning various aches and pains, but whole and present all the same. You will always be unendingly grateful you all made it out alive of this. Well, you all died, but you ended up fine. Anyway.

You all find some way to maintain contact with each other as the lot of you fly to the Land of Skyscrapers and Surf. You and Shiro are holding hands, and Lance and Hunk and Pidge are so wrapped up in each other you don’t quite know how they’re flying. Shiro’s cape is a line between your two groups, the taut fabric a reassurance that everyone is still here. 

Landing while still joined proves slightly difficult, but you and your boyfriend manage better than the tangle of LancePidgeHunk, who all land in the water before finally detaching themselves from each other. 

Allura, Matt, Coran, Ryou, and Mr. Holt are sitting on the lower beams of the nearest building, and Allura’s windchime laugh is carried across the water to the five of you. Lance splashes at the group of them, which prompts Matt to dive into the water right on top of him. It’s a while before they surface again. It’s a nice decompression after the shit show that just happened. Which, right, you should tell the others about.

It takes most of the afternoon, and the sun is setting on Lance’s land by the time the five of you have each shared your piece of the battle. Mr. Holt looks downright confused by everything all of you have said, and Coran doesn’t look much better. Matt and Allura, however, are a wonderfully captive audience. They gasp at all the right parts, and cheer when you all recount how you killed Zarkon. The group gets out of the water, then, and you all make the journey up to the top of the tower. 

From there, Shiro takes your hand in his gently glowing one, and the two of you start flying toward Skaia. You look down to see Allura and Coran holding hands, with Lance and Hunk not far behind. Matt seems to have jumped on Pidge, who’s got him in a fireman’s carry, with Ryou bringing up the rear. You look back to the man you’re in love with and he grins so wide down at you you can’t help but smile back. 

There’s a platform there, underneath Skaia, and you don’t know how long it’s been there; did it just show up once you killed Zarkon, or has it been there the whole time? It doesn’t matter, you decide, because it’s here now, because you won. You still can’t get over it, this lifetime of a war compressed into a few days for you all. And now, a new universe for the making all because you killed the biggest douchebag that ever existed.

A house appears on the edge of the platform, glowing a blinding white. Shiro takes a step toward it, and it flips around, a door knob finally visible where there had been none before. He takes one last look back at you all, smiling faces and relief evident, and turns the knob. You follow him as you would anywhere, through anything. You won.

**Author's Note:**

> What a damn ride, huh? Tell me what you liked best, or what you thought was funny! And don't forget to give alexlarder the loving she deserves!!! --> http://alexlarder.tumblr.com/post/177183497554/i-was-once-again-paired-up-with-the-amazing
> 
> Also, sidenote, there's gotta be an easier way to format pesterlogs like im dying over here man. @ao3 save me from htm-hell


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